Made-up names are hard to figure out... "Kyrla"?

[Kisai]

I have a friend who couldn't have a more confusing name for me to try and translate. Out of three people whose names I tried to translate into Japanese, her's is the hardest. So far there's:
Mojo = モジョ. Simple, easy. There's a character for "mo" and a character combo for "jo".
Jafira = ジャフィラ. I thought this was going to be a pretty hard and tricky one, but to my surprise, it works rather well. There's a character combo for "ja" and a combo for "fi", with the basic character "ra" at the end. (Yes, the middle part of "Jafira", the "fi" part, IS pronounced "fee".)

Kyrla = ????. How the hell do I translate that? Kyrla?? An R AND an L together? It doesn't help that she INSISTS on pronouncing it "kee-are-la", when for YEARS, like, the past 5 or 7, I've been pronouncing it as "ky-are-la", in an attempt to make it more sensible. ("Ky" as in, rhyming with "why", a literal "ky" in the pronounciation of the word that BEGINS with those two letters.)

My best guess was "ki - a - ru - ra", since you get the nonsensical "ki" sound in there, and with the R and L in there, I figured "ru" and "ra" would be my best bet. There's no literal "LA" sound in Japanese like her name apparently has at the end, and there's NO natural transition for an R to L either. In Japanese, would her name, "kee-are-lah" be pronounced "ki-a-ru-ra" and spelled "キアルラ"?

I'm not too sure, since I might not know all the rules for how pronounciation works with certain sounds and letters and whatnot. I'm pretty much a newb. But does anyone have any suggestions or info on how her name would be pronounced and spelled in Japanese?

[phreadom]

I would guess something like キアーラ. Since the r in here name sort of rolls into the l, it would probably just be left out rather than emphasized.

[Kisai]

Hmm... Maybe... That's a good point. ^^; That might be the closest to getting it to sound phonetically like "kee-are-lah", like if you were to say it really fast. I never DID understand how and where those dashes come into katakana, but I'll take your suggestion. ^_^; I trust someone else here over my own knowledge anyway, being the newb that I am, so I'll go with that. ^^ Thanks!

[phreadom]

To learn more about the "dash" used there... please read my explanation of it in the following comments: http://thejapanesepage.com/beginners/hi ... mment-2158

Hopefully that explains it well enough.

Let us know if you have any further questions!

[AJBryant]

I'm just boggling at how the hell you can get "Ky-ar-la" out of Kyrla. There is only ONE vowel, so can be only one vowel sound, between the K and the L. Yet somehow you are getting TWO vowels. That's impossible.

If I saw that name, I'd read it as "Keer-la" or maybe Kurr-la.

I think Y'ALL are mispronouncing it.

[Cyborg Ninja]

キャアキャア？