Name to put on knife

[SpikeC]

Before I heat treat the blade that I'm making I thought that I would like to engrave my name on it in asian form. One kanji form I have found looks like this:

Does anyone know any Japanese people who might know if this is "Spike"?

 

[SpikeC]

Then there is katakana:

 

[kalaeb]

I think SPIKE in english would look pretty cool. No one has anything like that on a blade.

 

[spaceconvoy]

There's no way you could pronounce the first one as Supaiku in Japanese - the most likely reading would be Shihyakkoku, but to most people it would look like nonsense Go with the katagana

 

[SpikeC]

Well crap! I just came in from the shop where I engraved the first one! Maybe I will put Spike on the other side. Regardless of whether anyone can make sense out of it, it does look pretty cool!

 

[SpikeC]

Here is a crummy picture of the engraving.....

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/_R-BA0-S2VKk/TYPas1Qhu-I/AAAAAAAAAGo/pNEuA41L20Y/Photo 4.jpg

 

[RRLOVER]

I like spike on the blade better.

 

[spaceconvoy]

But you got the kanji from somewhere, right? It's probably Chinese pronunciation.

 

[SpikeC]

That is the case, it is chinese. Maybe I should incorporate some lead in there somewhere?

 

[DrNaka]

Do you know that there is no lonely consonant in Japanese (other than "n")?
You can never write Spike in Japanese letters.
The katakana スパイク will read Su-pa-i-ku and it will be a 4 morae word.

Many do not know about mora so I will make a link to wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mora_(linguistics)

 

[SpikeC]

Thank you DrNaka, the wiki article was interesting, however I failed to glean much enlightenment from it! Is it possible to write "Cornelius" in japanese letters?

 

[spaceconvoy]

English to Japanese will always be an approximate transcription, as opposed to a direct transliteration (see here if you want to geek out). You can't write "Cornelius" or "Spike" directly, but you can write "Kouniriasu" and "Supaiku". Which, depending on your point of view, is either completely different or basically the same thing.

 

[SpikeC]

Well, the main thing was to see how my engraving would work on steel, and that was successful. The fact that what I engraved was basically gibberish does not detract from the quality of the engraving itself. I will be making more knives, so the next one will be something else, butt it remains to be seen what!

 

[DrNaka]

Thank you DrNaka, the wiki article was interesting, however I failed to glean much enlightenment from it! Is it possible to write "Cornelius" in japanese letters?

I see.
I realize that you "I failed to glean much enlightenment from it! "
Otherwise you would not made the question:"Is it possible to write "Cornelius" in japanese letters?"

The answer to this question is no.
But if you do not matter of same pronunciation コルネリウス or コーネリウス would be the katakana.