I have a hypothesis as to how the token ーン originated and why it’s associated specifically with the character Mejiro McQueen. The results from Google Images seem to show that the character is often referred to in Japanese as “メジロマックEーン”—notice the Latin letter E near the end!
Obviously, using a solitary Latin letter in the middle of a Japanese spelling is extremely unusual, but somebody (likely the creators of the character) decided to do it for artistic purposes. (It’s a bit like if Toyota Motor Corporation decided to start writing their name as “Toヨta.”)
A typical Japanese human would notice that “メジロマックEーン” is just “メジロマックイーン” with the character “イ” replaced with “E.” On the other hand, a hand-written computer algorithm would probably be written under the assumption that Latin letters and katakana never occur together in the same word, and so it would treat “ーン” as if it were a separate word.
I don’t see any reason to think it’s a horse neighing sound. It’s not “McQueeeeeeen” either; the plain old “ee” sound in “McQueen” is considered to be a long vowel already, so it’s written as “イー” (or, in this case, “Eー”). “McQuinn” would probably be transcribed without the long vowel mark, as “マックイン,” but “McQueen” is “マックイーン.”
I have a hypothesis as to how the token ーン originated and why it’s associated specifically with the character Mejiro McQueen. The results from Google Images seem to show that the character is often referred to in Japanese as “メジロマックEーン”—notice the Latin letter E near the end!
Obviously, using a solitary Latin letter in the middle of a Japanese spelling is extremely unusual, but somebody (likely the creators of the character) decided to do it for artistic purposes. (It’s a bit like if Toyota Motor Corporation decided to start writing their name as “Toヨta.”)
A typical Japanese human would notice that “メジロマックEーン” is just “メジロマックイーン” with the character “イ” replaced with “E.” On the other hand, a hand-written computer algorithm would probably be written under the assumption that Latin letters and katakana never occur together in the same word, and so it would treat “ーン” as if it were a separate word.
I don’t see any reason to think it’s a horse neighing sound. It’s not “McQueeeeeeen” either; the plain old “ee” sound in “McQueen” is considered to be a long vowel already, so it’s written as “イー” (or, in this case, “Eー”). “McQuinn” would probably be transcribed without the long vowel mark, as “マックイン,” but “McQueen” is “マックイーン.”