Hanko in Katakana

Greetings from Greece!

I would love to create a Hanko for myself and my wife so we can sign our work, we are both in the tattoo industry and we currently own a tattoo shop in Greece. We are going to be visiting Japan in the near future for Conventions etc and as our shop is already "themed" as much as possible by the japanese culture and I thought it would be nice to be able to use something more 'authentic' lets say for our visiting times there and for our work in general.

The problem is that I'm having some trouble with creating / finding the correct phonetics for what we need, as both of our "artist" names are derived from name / family name as a mixture.

To be more exact our names are:

Xkon and Marsa, to give you a more indepth feel of how they are pronounced ( that's where I'm having trouble ) I can break them down for you with some english words as examples.

X = [ex]calibur
Kon = [con]nect

So it would be Excon

Mars = is the same as Mars the planet
A = [A]lphabet / [a]pocalypse

So it would be Marsa

The shops name is MK Ink as again it uses both of our names and you pronounce it as you see it in english letters M [Em] K [Kay] Ink.

I'm a bit lost as from what I understand there isn't a straight phonetic character for some of the letters so we could use your kind help there :) .

Also if I'm not mistaken the correct way for a vertical square Hanko would be "family name / name " so I should make something like this:

M | X
K | K
I | O
N | N
K |

.

Thank you for taking the time to read my question and any help is welcome!

Best regards.

I realised that I couldn't edit my original post so I guess I'll continue here

As far as I could find out the:

エメケインク would be as: e me ke inku, MK Ink.

エクスコン would be as: e ku su ko n, Xkon.

マレサ would be as: ma re sa, Marsa.

Correct me if I'm wrong please :D or if there would be an more simple approach and use.

Best regards.

Xkon = エクスコン
Marsa = マーサ or マアサ
M K Ink = エム・ケイ　インク

Foreign names are normally printed in "Katakana" due to no correct matching "Kanji".
You can also choose close or appropriate Kanji on your own, but it's normally hard to read or pronounce for even Japanese natives(foreigners don't even understand the character meanings).

When you make a hanko, it depends on the size but a standard hanko size allows 2-4 Kanji characters, 5-8 alphabets can be curved. As characters added, it will be difficult to read when the hanko was stamped. Therefore, Japanese natives only curve their surname characters(normally 2-3 characters).

I often think to send a hanko for a foreign friend as a gift with their name curved, but give up to do so due to the letter numbers. Some foreign names have consisted with large number of charactors(eg, "Van Leeuwen" from Netherlands).

If you can choose your name in kanji(2-3 characters), it can be clearly curved and printed.

Thank you very much for your reply "tokyo friend 48" and the in-depth information!

For starters it would be a "digital" stamp I guess just to sign out our creations or posters ets that we carry arround with us. But in the future we would definitely get a crafted Hanko.

Furthermore so I won't make any mistakes I was correct on the way of creating even the digital one? It would be like http://i.imgur.com/RDGcg6e.jpg this ?

Sorry for keeping on with the questions but as they are going to be on our artwork I want them to be as perfect as possible :)

Best regards.

For Marsa, if you want to pronounce the R, then I would suggest
マルサ

Mars pronounced UK style is different from Mars pronounced US style.
http://www.oddcast.com/home/demos/tts/tts_example.php?sitepal

I know what you mean.
Your digital stamp seems to be perfect.

マルサ sounds a bit strange for me.
If "Marsa" can be pronounced "Martha", it should be マーサ or マアサ.

Thank you both for your replies.

Yes the R in Marsa would be nice to be pronounced else it would seem like a totally different name,

Tokyo friend's sounds like Maasa as Uco's sounds like Marusa if I'm correct.

I guess the マルサ is closer to the English pronounciation from what I hear on that lovely text-to-speech website.

tokyo friend 48,

The reason I mentioned that is because I used to have a Mexican friend named Martha with a strong R sound. Also, in Japanese we call the island of Malta マルタ島

I don't know much about Greek pronunciations, but I assumed it can be close to Latin, therefore being similar to the likes of Martha and Malta. Anyway, we can leave it to the OP to decide.

ギリシャのお名前ということだったので、ラテン系の発音に近いのかなと感じました。 あとはトピ主さん次第ですね。

Yes it's closer to Latin as you say that's why I chose to use the one you gave me as it sounded more familiar to me.

These are the final stamps if you would like to check them and tell me.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/zyr9mxvltbdyoim/MKINK_katakana.jpg?dl=0

Best regards and thank you very much for your time!

Are you sure to print/curve "Exkon" as "エクスコン"?
Just be aware that in English, it sounds as "Ex-con" , a slang from "ex-convict". In the international scene/show, you may be asked often what you did in the past, lol and people sure remember your name, which is a plus. I know some strange Spanish names when English speakers hear.

Well I know that probably some people will be confused that's why we will have the English characters also the "tag" is actually my name as of Xenos KONstantinos. What can I say I've been using it for years already without a problem or so :)

Now that I was over-thinking about it actually you might be correct. I was always using it in the Greek scene that "x-con" wouldn't mean anything actually but yeah it figures that abroad it would cause misunderstandings.

So I guess my full name Konstantinos would be : コンスタンティノズ

Correct?

Thank you again for the replies.

I forgot about the pronounciation as it's greek

Konstantinos

Kon = [con]vict ( hahaha )
Sta = [sta]nce
Nti = [dee]p
Nos = [nos]tradamus

I made some more research and exchanges some characters

So this : コンスタディノズ , would be Konstadeenoze sounds more familiar regardin the Greek pronunciation

Wow! Those are nice designs! I like the colour, too! They're nothing like one of those stupid ones that non-Japanese people accidentally make.

About your name, I think most Japanese people wouldn't imagine "ex-convict" from エクスコン. They won't even know what "convict" means, and even if they do they'd probably won't notice the link. At least I didn't.

Meanwhile, names such as コンスタンティヌス and コンスタンティノープル are very familiar to the Japanese, because we all learn about them in history class. So, to the Japanese, your real name is probably not too difficult to pronounce. But then, xcon sounds more pop and cool, especially with the alphabet along.

Hope you have fun in Japan!