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My wife's last name in passport is Levadnia. When our marriage certificate was
translated into Japanese it became レヴァドニャ.

To my taste having ヴァ in there is over-complicating. Also ニャ nya has a
childish twist to it. I don't think there is a difference in pronunciation
between ヴァ and ワ. Therefore, I would like to simplify it for the other
documents like so.

レワドニヤ VS. レヴァドニャ

Maybe it is even more natural to have "ba" バ in there?

In my view this should decrease chances of people mistyping her last name and
increase readability.

What looks more correct?
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2016-03-17T09:28:26.150
32943
2016-03-18T08:59:51.490
2922
question
names
Can katakana ワ be used in official name?
Based on the OP's comments, here's my thoughts.

First of all, ワ and ヴァ are totally different katakana with totally different
sounds at least to the ears of Japanese. Are you a native speaker of (British
or American) English who can distinguish [the difference between W and V
sounds](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=utT8afVLf68) without difficulty? Then
all you have to know is that ワ roughly corresponds to English "wa" and ヴァ
corresponds to English "va". The difference is very large and important, both
in English and Japanese. I don't believe it's a matter of taste.

If an average Japanese speaker who is not familiar with Slovak names (like me)
sees _Levadnia_ , they certainly use ヴァ or バ, because they try to read this as
an English word. [Japanese people have difficulty in distinguishing V and B
sounds](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/24498/do-japanese-
actually-pronounce-the-v-sound), so the choice between ヴァ and バ is a matter of
taste. ヴァ is not particularly complicated to average Japanese adults, but if
you need maximum readability and brevity, バ is a safe choice.

**TLDR:** You need to seriously think about the difference between レヴァドニャ and
レワドニャ. Neither is more grammatically correct than the other, and only you and
your wife can decide. If you decide レヴァドニャ is the right sound, you can also
use レバドニャ.

`-ia` can be ～ニア, ～ニャ or ～ニヤ (For example _Tania_ can be タニア, ターニャ, タニヤ). I
don't think ～ニャ is particularly childish, but perhaps レヴァドニヤ or レヴァドニア is a
bit easier to pronounce.
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2016-03-17T21:53:43.093
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2016-03-18T08:59:51.490
2017-04-13T12:43:44.260
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answer