In China and Taiwan, they write his name as ''哆啦A梦'' - with a romaji ''A'' as the third character of the word. I have no idea, since there is an A sound
in the Chinese sound system. Why don't they write it all in Chinese characters?
And in other countries, France, Germany, Sweden, etc, what is Doraemon called in those languages. In Chinese he is also called SHIAO DING DONG, especially by children, a term meaning LITTLE BELL, for the bell around his neck.
[Professor quick response tells me from her Taipei office: ''I've learned that the sound, from Japanese of course, is not pronounced 'ah' but rather 'ei'; i.e., the Canadian "eh".
But there's only one Mandarin character with that pronunciation, which I'm told both in terms of meaning and tone sound weird for this purpose.
It's a fourth tone 'ei', and it means (from my Far Eastern Chinese-English Dictionary) "an exclamation indicating promise or affirmation":
"Ei(4), wo(3) jiou(4) lai(4)!" means "Yes, I'll come in a moment!"]