There are fairly fixed rules about foreign words -> katakana; the problem with names like the ones you're listing is that they're often (but not always) based on the original Greek, Latin, Hebrew, etc. pronunciation rather than the way they're pronounced in English.

Well, it's stupid for foreigners who already speak the language the word came from. But it makes no difference to the Japanese what rules (if any) "katakanization" follows, since they learn each word from scratch anyway, they don't translate from another language. They just need them to be as easy to pronounce as possible.

And, of course, Japanese is not meant to accommodate foreigners, it's meant to accommodate natives.

As always, students of Japanese have two options:
1. toil over a dictionary all day, to write stuff you can't really write
2. don't try to produce Japanese text that contains large amounts of words you haven't learned yet, rely on input to become familiar with them instead

I would suggest the second. Imported words are especially convenient to read, because you can usually recognize them the first time you see them.

Last edited by Stansfield123 (2013 March 12, 8:44 am)

From the introduction to "Easy Katakana, How to Read English Loanwords in Japanese" by Tina Wells & Aoi Yokouchi:

"...not all gairaigo spellings have been standardized.  This is especially true with names.  Don't be surprised if three different people spell your name three different, but similar ways.  Choose or create a spelling you think comes closest to the sounds in your name, and use it."

Hi!

There's a set of rules in DoIJG starting from page 615, although I find it easier to learn the katakana loan words than memorizing and confidently using those rules.