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My mother's name is Colombia (like the country) and I'm trying to give her a
gift because she loves the Japanese landscapes (like trees or combinations of
red, black and white). I want to write her name in a correct way and explain
to her in a simple words. On the Internet I found 哥倫比亜.
(<https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E5%93%A5%E5%80%AB%E6%AF%94%E4%BA%9C#Japanese>)
But reading books and trying to understand the correct way is hard and maybe
this web page could help me.  
I ask a person in a congress and she wrote this on paper and its very
different. I tried to search for information but maybe I don't have the
correct path or sites for this information.

[![](https://i.stack.imgur.com/m0bME.png)](https://i.stack.imgur.com/m0bME.png)
CC BY-SA 3.0
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meaning kanji names ateji
Looking for ateji for Colombia
哥倫比亜 is an [ateji](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ateji) country name for
Columbia. It was created many years ago to write Columbia in kanji, but
ordinary Japanese people today do not use nor understand 哥倫比亜. Well, each
kanji is not so difficult, so it makes sense as a quiz (i.e., "Which country
does this refer to?").

  * [What’s your country’s name in traditional Japanese ateji?](https://deadreckoning8.wordpress.com/2014/02/09/whats-your-countrys-name-in-traditional-japanese-ateji/)
  * [The logic behind kanji choice for country name ateji](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/q/24295/5010)

By nature, there are theoretically thousands of possible ways to write
Columbia using ateji. The image you pasted reads 古呂ン美阿 written vertically.
That's another possible way to write Columbia using ateji, but I don't think
it's an orthodox one. I got nothing related to Columbia by googling with
古呂ン美阿. (Artistically speaking, it's well written, though.)

If your mother loves kanji and you really need to use kanji for Columbia,
perhaps 哥倫比亜 would be the normal choice.
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Country names are nowadays usually written in _katakana_ although the _ateji_
do feature in abbreviations, where usually the first character of the _ateji_
is used. (A well-known exception being 米 from 亜 **米** 利加 because 亜 had already
been used for 亜細亜【アジア】.)

In case of Colombia, Wikipedia actually lists [many
_ateji_](https://ja.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%9B%BD%E5%90%8D%E3%81%AE%E6%BC%A2%E5%AD%97%E8%A1%A8%E8%A8%98%E4%B8%80%E8%A6%A7):

  * 哥倫比亜
  * 哥倫比
  * 可倫比亜
  * 哥倫米阿
  * 閣龍比亜
  * 古倫比亜
  * 可侖比亜
  * 古論備亜
  * 戈攬弥阿
  * 古論備屋
  * 科倫比亜

However, of these only the first one appears in most of the sources.

If you are not going to write the country's name, then you're not expected to
use the most common _ateji_ for the country.

There are names whose _kanji_ are chosen like _ateji_. But none of the above
candidates look like a woman's name (which is not surprising!).
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