I changed my name in Japanese
Konnichiwa!
I have decided to change how my surname is spelled in Japanese. Until 2022, I have been writing it as アガラワル but after putting great thought I have decided to write it as アグルワール. The former name when written in Romaji is “Agarawaru” but the new one is “Aguruwaaru”.
In English, I write it as “Aggarwal” but depending on the location some people write it as “Agrawal”, “Agarwal” etc. But in Hindi, it is always spelled as अग्रवाल. I wanted my name in Japanese to pronounce closer to how it is pronounced in Hindi. I have created a video to explain how it is pronounced:
The Japanese language has phonetic alphabets like Hindi, i.e. each written character represents a vocal sound. This is not true for English as the sound of English characters changes in words. e.g. in ‘National’ the ‘tio’ sounds like ‘sh’. Unfortunately, the Japanese language has no ‘l’ sound and almost every consonant is followed by a vowel so the last character has become ‘ru’. In Japanese, there are only a handful of consonants: k, g, s, t, n, h, p, m, y, r, w. Also, almost every character must be followed by a vowel i.e. a, i, u, e, o. When Hindi is written in English, an ‘a’ is usually added after the consonant e.g. in “Rama” an ‘a’ is added at the end. This ‘a’ sound is not stressed much. But in Japanese, the ‘u’ after consonants is not stressed much usually. So e.g. in ‘onegaishimasu’, the ending ‘u’ is not stressed much. If you have understood all this, then perhaps now you can understand why I changed from “Agarawaru” to “Aguruwaaru”. Thanks to this, when I hear a third person read my name for the first time in Japanese, I find the new name closer to my real name in Hindi.
I will write my name in the four languages that I know:
English: Gopal Krishan Aggarwal
Hindi: गोपाल कृष्ण अग्रवाल
Punjabi: ਗੋਪਾਲ ਕ੍ਰਿਸ਼ਨ ਅਗਰਵਾਲ
Japanese: ゴパール・クリシャン・アグルワール
The Japanese language does not have a space, so usually, a middle-dot is used to separate the first/last/middle names of foreign people.
You can get a feel of how it is pronounced in Japanese via Google Translate’s ‘Listen’ button: https://translate.google.com/?sl=ja&tl=hi&text=%E3%82%B4%E3%83%91%E3%83%BC%E3%83%AB%E3%83%BB%E3%82%AF%E3%83%AA%E3%82%B7%E3%83%A3%E3%83%B3%E3%83%BB%E3%82%A2%E3%82%B0%E3%83%AB%E3%83%AF%E3%83%BC%E3%83%AB
Thank you for reading! I would love to know what type of articles you want me to write about Japan.