The name I go by basically just means diary in Japanese. I think the pitch accent is different though.
Yes, and as you are no doubt aware, parents can get very superstitious when picking out the right kanji for their children’s names. For example it can be important to find a combination of kanji with a “lucky” number of strokes.
Before my son was born, my wife and I settled on a Japanese name for him based upon her suggestions and my feeling of what would be easy for English speakers to pronounce and would sound good. It took a long time before we found one we both liked. Then she got her parents in Japan to find a lucky kanji for him. So we decided on Makoto/まこと (for me completely based on the sound) and her parents came back with 真人 which has a nice meaning, though I don’t know if the number of strokes is particularly lucky.
@Syphus has answered you on how Japanese people pick kanji. If the question was intended to be “how to foreigners write their names in kanji?”, the answer is “don’t, really don’t (unless it’s absolutely required for legal reasons, such as becoming a naturalised citizen)”.
立派な皿?
A friend of mine got her Kanjis based on the total amount of strokes. Hers was 13, which is supposed to be super lucky.
Edit: Ha, just saw Sezme’s post. Now mine is kinda redundant, but it’s just another example.
EDIT: I made a mistake and replied to the wrong person so @Belthazar
In case you’re curious, the currently accepted hypothesis for why the greengrocer is called 八百屋 is this:
In the Muromachi period 青物 was coined as a term (in the context of 女房言葉) for 野菜 due to the colour of their foliage. Following this, stores selling 野菜 came to be called 青物屋 (あおものや), shortened, this is 青屋 (あおや). The first issue with this is that あおや is hard to say, Japanese people are lazy 
The second issue is that 青屋 could also refer to shops that specialised in 藍染 (indigo dyeing). Thus, either in order to make it easier to say or to alleviate the ambiguity, あおや was discarded and replaced with やおや to indicate greengrocers.
Lastly there is the matter of the 当て字 used for やおや. Since 八百 was already utilised for words like 嘘八百 (うそはっぴゃく) and 八百万 (やおよろず), indicating things that were especially numerous, and since vegetables at the greengrocer were especially numerous, it was only a matter of time before the 漢字 came to be used since Japanese people love wordplay
If you feel like getting in some reading practice, here is the original article from Yurai Naze:
Cheers,
(withdrew the post above because I didn’t mean to reply to MidnightOverlord in particular)
The subject of how to transcribe non-Japanese names is interesting and sometimes controversial.
This was an article on the subject from a few years ago:
And Tofugu has this article which talks a bit about not using kanji in your (roman-lettered)
name:
Sometimes there are accepted katakana variations, just as there are different spellings in English names (Darryl, Darrel, Daryl…). My name is usually transcribed デイモン. But I prefer デーモン mostly because it’s my name and I’ve been writing it this way for over 20 years. To back me up, Wikipedia shows that at least Damon Albarn’s (English singer/songwriter) name is written that way in katakana as well. So I keep spelling my name my way even though my wife doesn’t (because she says it can be confused with “demon”), and my Japanese teacher doesn’t probably for the same reason.
Another Claire here and I don’t know how I will solve this when I go overseas. My nickname doesn’t help either - Clary. ;(
Thanks for the reply lesson - I didn’t know you could do that!
No, katakana often makes no sense. Necktie is ネクタイ, but Necklace is ネックレス. I mean, really!
Nothing to solve, really. You will say “Claire” and they will say, “何？” And then you’ll say クレア, and they’ll say, “ああ、クレアさんですね！” And then you can go to a nice patisserie in Tokyo or Kobe and order an エクレア, and they will understand you perfectly and it will be delicious.
The problem with the Jisho name search is that it doesn’t really tell you how common something is. In this case I am referring to “Hifumi” , specifically 加藤一二三.
What does that mean? Iget that the first bit is my name but what is the ですね for?
Kind of like, “Oh, it’s Clair, right!” ね is often tacked onto the end of the sentence when the speaker is making sure that the listener is in agreement. It’s not really a question, but more an implied confirmation that we’re sharing the same thought or information, something like “isn’t it” in “It’s raining hard today, isn’t it!” So in the case of the sentence I wrote, it would imply that the listener thinks they have your name now, but feel free to correct them if not.
My moving to Japan made me realize how inconsistent the Japanese system for turning Western names into katakana is. I had a lot of problems starting out because the name associated with my bank got noted in katakana differently than it was on my residence card. The differences were very slight (difference in use of エ vs エイ, the use of small ッ, and the use of a ー mark), but large enough to cause issues. 
i guess i’m lucky in that you can only really japanize Chuck as チャック and i’m not sure anyone would go for チャク. good thing i don’t go by my full name anymore– forget spelling, just watching Japanese people struggle to say Charles back when i used it was painful.
speaking of that lack of standards, how about プラスチック vs パラスチック? that one always leaves me scratching my head.
It’s very normal for consonant pairs and ending consonants to acquire an ウ-based kana because of the tendency to cut the vowel sound. Saying パラスチック would end up being “Parastic.” Because the Japanese quickly move from the “p” sound into the hard “r,” it produces a close representation of the English “pl.” The same goes for other vowel pairs like “st” using ス and “cr” using ク.
Packaging all seems to use プラ, so that’s pretty consistent as far as I have seen.
This was not my experience at all trying to introduce myself to japanese people…
I met a girl in Japan named Jordan who was frustrated because whenever she introduced herself as ジョウダン、Japanese people would try not to laugh at her…