It's more the l than the r, the pronunciation is also otherwise completely different in Japanese, because they don't have consonant finals, only nasals. You end up with ro-rahn-doh.
That's what I was thinking. If he really wanted a name that would be the same in English and Japanese, he would have nixed the "d" at the end and called the company "Rolan".
"I named it Roland because I wanted it to sound the same in other languages..."
"But, but... English speakers read it as Roland. Japanese speakers read it as rorando."
"Yes, exactly. Same thing."