Name Changes

I got an email from one of the readers and she wrote her name in katakana (the writing system used for foreign words and names) at the end - ロクサーン (rokusaan). But it's awfully long, don't you think? How many people do you know with five-syllable names? How many of those people address letters to friends with the whole name? Here's a list of all the five-syllable Western names I could find: Alexandria, Anastasia, Angelia, Evangelinam Philidephia

So, as I was saying.

The way I spell my name here is inaccurate to my English name, but that was done on purpose to facilitate pronunciation by other people. William is not easy for Japanese people to say, and comes out as ウィリアム (uiriamu), another five-syllable beast. Then I thought "I usually go by Will, so how about that?" and got ウィル (uiru). Japanese doesn't have the W sound that's at the beginning of my name, so I'm largely out of luck in making it any shorter if I want it to be recognizable. It's spelled as three syllables, but the I is written smaller, so it's slurred into the U noise to sort emulate a W. My name is effectively two syllables long.

With my last name, I completely gave up. Lockwood is nice and easy in English, yeah? Not nearly so in Japanese: ロックウード (rokku-uudo). Compare this to a normal Japanese name in length:

ウィリアム・ロックウード (Uiriamu ROKKU-UUDO)

たなかたろ (Taro TANAKA)

This post was originally an email to ロクサーン (without the romanized pronunciation guides), which went something like this, with some fluff at the beginning:

You might consider shortening your name, for example. I mean, your name has two syllables in English, but the way you write it in katakana, it has five. In addition, you get that whole ロクサーン/Ａさん (rokusaan/A-san thing, right? [san is a generic suffix for people in Japan, so having it as part of your name gets frustrating quickly]
You will also want to avoid any constructions with くそ in them, as that's a prefix that means "fucking". くそ暑い (kuso atsui) - Fucking hot

You might consider the following options:
ラックセン (rakkusen) - About the closest you can get to your real name with my pronunciation.
ラクセン (rakusen) - But this is the reading for 落選 (election loss, rejection)
ロクセン (rokusen) - You probably want to avoid the さん, though...
ロクス (rokusu)
ロックス (rokksu) - That 小さいつ is kind of annoying sometimes, though, and adds another syllable.
ロカン (rokan) - Sounds vaguely similar to 旅館 (ryokan, Japanese-style inn)
ロカ (roka) - Sounds close to 廊下 (rouka, corridor)

Any questions, class?