eli5: how does romaji work with english names?

Question

if my name is Victor then the Japanese name would be ヴィクトル but then why does the romaji spelling become Vikutoru instead of Victor?

In: 0

Answer 1

Each Japanese character is associated with a single sound, and all but one (“n”) ends in a vowel. The ones that end in -u are often used at the end of foreign syllables where there would be a consonant in the source language, as that -u sound is often dropped in speech even with Japanese words. Since the Japanese language has no way to end a syllable with either -k or -r, they use the characters for “ku” and “ru” instead, but would not pronounce them when saying your name, so it would come out sounding similar to how you would pronounce it in your native language.