Why is Kirby's name written カービィ instead of カービ?

[BadCat]

Does ビィ have a different pronunciation from ビ?

Also here’s a Kirby as thanks for entering this thread.

[Omun]

I think it’s because they want you to slightly drag out the ビィ sound, rather than just a shorter ビ sound.

As far I understand it, writing it like that is supposed to be an extended vowel, like if you write it ビー.

If I’m incorrect on that, I’m sure others will correct me. ^^

[Kazzeon]

Maybe Kirby instead of Kirbi.

I’ll link to this post of mine that just got marked as an answer for some reason.

Double vowels in katakana

There’s this question about it: Apparently, it’s so it’s Kirby instead of Kirbi, which is what I thought. But there’s not really much else in that answer.

[BadCat]

That’s interesting! I didn’t know they would care about the English spelling when writing the katakana.

[Leebo]

This reminded me of a funny instance of hypercorrection I’ve seen from a few Japanese people. That is, when your awareness of a rule leads you to “correct” even instances that don’t follow said rule.

You’ll often hear Japanese people call the city in Florida “Orland.” Because they know that usually ド at the end of a katakanized English word probably shouldn’t be said as “do”. They get tricked by the exception.

Maybe Orlando should be オーランドォ

[ChristopherFritz]

This conversation reminds me of when Pokemon Gold/Silver came out in Japan. The Pokemon Cleffa (who didn’t have an English name yet) is called ピィ in the Japanese version of the game. On my Pokemon web site I had at the time, I romanized its name as “Py” because of how characters like “カービィ” have a “y” at the end of their name in English.