Translation of name to Japanese?

My 2 1/2-yr-old son passed away 6 months ago and I want to get a tattoo of his name: Kevin

I don't know much about the Japanese language, but I have seen some sites that offer translations.

For example:
http://japanesetranslator.co.uk/your-name-in-japanese/?foren...

and
http://www.jun-gifts.com/personalizedgifts/namelistthree/k/n...

The second one is Kanji. I don't really understand the difference.

Can someone please help me to figure out which characters I should get so it has the proper meaning? Since this is in memory of my deceased son, I want it to be correct.

Thank you!

Sorry to hear of your son passing away.

Non-Japanese names are normally written in "katakana," phonetic letters for imported words and names. The first site gives you that in "brush stroke" style. It SAYS ƒPƒ”ƒBƒ“ Ke-vi-n, it is transcription of the sound into katakana.

Now in the second site, what they are doing is assigning "arbitrarily selected" kanji to the SOUND of the name (disregarding the meaning), because Western names do not come with the kanji to begin with. In this case, they picked 䯥q, the first kanji meaning "glorious/gorgeous" and the second "agile," with the sounds "ka" and "bin," the closest they could get. When they pick kanji characters, they tend to pick those kanji that they think have pleasant meanings, but the choices are arbitrary, and there are other kanji that have the same sounds (and different meanings) too.

In the first place, I do not know why people want to get a tattoo in a language they don't understand (sorry to say this), but if you must, and if you want to do justice to your son's name, I would go for the katakana version. You might want to look around for different styles, though. The brushstroke style you found looks a little bit too exaggerated (to me, at least).

Thank you for your input, that makes sense.

As to why a tattoo in another language? I want it to look like art, and I don't want someone to see it and say "who is Kevin?" I will know it is his name, but I can even lie and say it means something else if I don't want to talk about it with someone. Japanese writing is beautiful and art on it's on, in my opinion, and the fact that no one (that I know) can read it makes it a little mysterious and a little more personal for me.

My friend has his kids names in Japanese down his back and it looks cool, IMO. I like it.

Thanks!

Please accept my deepest sympathy. Your reasons are understandable. In any case, if a japanese person sees ƒPƒ”ƒBƒ“, he for sure will know it is a male name. ‰Ø•q is more likely to remain as a mystery, but probably you would want to make sure you like the meaning of kanji.

I used to call my son "sweet boy" so I considered getting that in Kanji, maybe in addition to or instead of his name. I cannot find an existing translation of it anywhere, but I did find just "boy". Is there a simple translation of "sweet boy"?

The Kanji symbols look more artistic, but I understand that there isn't a one-to-one matching of meaning, and I wouldn't want something to end up meaning different than what I want. :)

Thanks so much for your responses, this is very helpful to me.

I'm sorry for your loss. I think that using the nickname sweet boy would be a a fitting dedication to your sons memory.

Here's the translation site I often use:

http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/cgi-bin/wwwjdic.cgi?1C

What is the meaning you want to convey with sweet? I'm guessing more like friendly, affectionate, kind? You may want to use those words instead of sweet so that it retains its meaning when translated.