Ogham Alphabet Transliterator

Common questions

What is the Ogham alphabet?

Ogham is a writing system associated with early Irish inscriptions. Its main letters use groups of strokes or notches along a stem. This page provides the Unicode letters, a chart of their names and this stated modern Latin-spelling scheme. It writes the spelling you supply; it does not reconstruct a historical inscription or translate a word into Irish.

How many letters are in the Ogham alphabet?

The main alphabet has 20 letters in four groups of five. The chart here lists all 26 encoded Unicode Ogham letters: those 20 plus six additional letter characters, including the forfeda and peith. Space and feather marks are listed separately. This is different from the 20 Latin letters that this particular transliteration scheme maps one for one.

Is Ogham the same as a runic alphabet?

Ogham and the Germanic runic alphabets are different writing systems. The chart and diagrams on this page use Ogham characters and the disclosed Latin-spelling mapping, including its unresolved letters. They do not convert text to Germanic runes.

How do you write J, K, V, W, X or Y in Ogham?

The Ogham alphabet has no letter for them, so this page leaves each one as the Latin letter you typed, lists it as unresolved and draws it as a dashed circle on the stem. When one of them appears, the page offers substitutions beside the text: J as I, K as C, V as F or U, W as F or U, X as C and S, and Y as I. Nothing is substituted until you pick one, and every pick is listed in the readout.

Does this translate English into Irish?

No. It writes the spelling you type in Ogham letters, one letter at a time, which is transliteration: it does not translate words or change how a name is spelled. To see an Irish name in Ogham, type its Irish spelling, such as Bríd or Seán; the accents fold to their base letters and each fold is listed.

Which direction is Ogham read?

Carved on standing stones it usually runs up an edge from the bottom; written in manuscripts it runs left to right. The diagram does either: vertical reads bottom to top and horizontal reads left to right, one stem per line of text. The Ogham text you copy is always in reading order, so the first letter you typed comes first.

Why do I see empty boxes instead of Ogham letters?

Your browser draws the Ogham text with a font already on your system, and a system with no Ogham font shows boxes or blanks. The text is still the right Unicode characters and shows properly wherever an Ogham font is installed. The stem diagram, its SVG and its PNG are drawn as lines rather than with a font, so the strokes look the same on every system.

What are the Ogham feather marks and the space mark?

U+169B OGHAM FEATHER MARK opens a line of Ogham and U+169C OGHAM REVERSED FEATHER MARK closes it; turn Feathers on and every line gets both. U+1680 OGHAM SPACE MARK separates words and is drawn as a stretch of stem. Spacing can also use a plain space, which breaks the stem, or run the words together, and the count of spaces run together is shown.

What happens to ng, st and vowel pairs such as ea or oi?

By default every letter is written on its own, so ng is nion then gort. Join ng, st writes ng as ngeadal (U+168D) and st as straif (U+168E); Join ng, st, vowels also writes ea, oi, ui, ia or io, and ae as eabhadh, or, uilleann, ifin and eamhancholl. Pairs join by spelling, left to right inside a word, and each joined pair is listed.

How are accented letters such as á or í handled?

By default an accented Latin letter folds to its base letter, so í is written as iodhadh and listed as í to i. Set Accents to Flag them and the letter stays as typed and is listed as unresolved instead. A letter with no A to Z base, such as ß or Ж, always stays as typed and flagged.

Do the letter names provide tree meanings or pronunciation?

The chart lists Unicode letter names and their Latin values in this page’s scheme. It does not supply a tree-correspondence system, divination meanings or spoken pronunciation. A Latin letter, an Ogham character name and a historical sound value are different kinds of information; the modern spelling conversion here should not be read as a linguistic or symbolic translation.

Can I download the Ogham diagram for a design?

Type your own spelling, resolve the letters you want to replace and choose Vertical, bottom to top or Horizontal, left to right. Download SVG for line artwork or PNG for a pixel image. The download includes the diagram shown, not the whole alphabet as a PDF. Inspect the listed substitutions and accents when using it as name artwork; the result is this stated modern spelling scheme.

What settings and text are remembered?

Only controls you deliberately change are remembered in this browser. Loading a worked example keeps its example settings separate from your remembered choices. Your typed name or text is not saved. The page continues to work when local storage is blocked.