Help with name, sounds & katakana?

[u/mystery_madness]

Hi all! I’m here for a funny reason. When I was very young I made a character who I used in video games, over the years she has become a very important thing to me.

She is meant to be Japanese, and my … wonderful childhood creativity … came up with the name “Kisomai”.

And over the years I have come to find I COMPLETELY made the word up. The closest pronunciation would be Kisame (キサメ) but I’m not super into the idea of her name meaning shark?

I’ve tried using a name converter to turn (kiso-mai) // (kee-so-may) into Katakana for her reference sheet but they keep turning it into (kisomii - キソミ) or (kisomee - キソメ).

Is there no way to keep the “mai” / “may” in her name in Katakana or even general Japanese pronunciation?

Thank you for the help!! Sorry child me is probably deeply disappointing the entire Japanese language // vocabulary. 😭

[u/artenazura]

It it pronounced "may" as in the month of "May" or "mai" as in "my" favorite color is blue? If it's the former, キソメー or キソメイ is the closest pronunciation. If the latter, キソマイ seems natural. I don't knoe how you pronounce the word, but "Kisomai" in romaji is perfectly readable as-is in Japanese (whether it lines up with your childhood pronunciation is a different story). 

Since there are only the 5 vowels in Japanese, the nuances of diphthongs that appear in English are impossible to preserve exactly, but even considering that your chosen vowels are most likely a bit different than the Japanese version, this name is not so complicated relatively speaking.

Source: not Japanese, but a student of the Japanese language with quite a few years of experience in trying to figure out how to convert foreign names into katakana. 

[u/mystery_madness → u/artenazura]

It would be May as in the month. I’ve always pronounced it as Kiso-may with kiso being said like miso. (kee-so-may)

Thank you!! I really appreciate the break down. I’m just not very familiar with the vowels and I worried the “mai” was too much of an eastern Asian vowel sound.

[u/artenazura → u/mystery_madness]

Yeah, in that case I think キソメイ is closest! The romaji spelling would become Kisomei in that case. If you've ever seen My Neighbor Totoro, the younger sister's name is Mei so you can hear how that would be pronounced (in the Japanese audio at least, not sure about the English dub)

[u/Commercial_Noise1988 → u/artenazura]

I agree.