Ogham Translator

Family name for a ring? Saw a stone in Kerry? This Ogham translator turns English letters into the old Irish strokes and back. Letters only. Type English and you'll get English in strokes, not Irish.

What Is Ogham?

It's an early medieval alphabet for writing Irish. Think notches cut along the edge of a stone. Some 400 carved stones survive, mostly in southern Ireland, with Cork and Kerry holding about 60% of the Irish ones. Pembrokeshire in Wales has the biggest group outside Ireland, and several stones there carry a name in both Ogham and Latin, while the Book of Ballymote from 1390 copies out a medieval handbook that explains the whole script. Most just give a person's name, which makes them the oldest name tags you'll ever read.

Group	Letters	Ogham	How they sit
First	B L F S N	ᚁ ᚂ ᚃ ᚄ ᚅ	One side of the line
Second	H D T C Q	ᚆ ᚇ ᚈ ᚉ ᚊ	Other side
Third	M G NG Z R	ᚋ ᚌ ᚍ ᚎ ᚏ	Slanted, through it
Fourth	A O U E I	ᚐ ᚑ ᚒ ᚓ ᚔ	Straight across it

The stones usually follow a set formula, often a name followed by son of and another name, which is why that one word, maqi, turns up on stone after stone across Munster. The oldest date from around the 4th century, though a few letters had already dropped out of speech by then, and that hints at older writing on wood that didn't survive.

How Do You Write Your Name in Ogham?

Type it, spelled your family's way. Irish names sit best here. Two feather marks open and close the line. Check your phone shows them before you trust a screenshot.

Name	Ogham
Aoife	᚛ᚐᚑᚔᚃᚓ᚜
Niamh	᚛ᚅᚔᚐᚋᚆ᚜
Saoirse	᚛ᚄᚐᚑᚔᚏᚄᚓ᚜
Liam	᚛ᚂᚔᚐᚋ᚜
Finn	᚛ᚃᚔᚅᚅ᚜
Sean	᚛ᚄᚓᚐᚅ᚜
Bridget	᚛ᚁᚏᚔᚇᚌᚓᚈ᚜
Cormac	᚛ᚉᚑᚏᚋᚐᚉ᚜
Patrick	᚛ᚚᚐᚈᚏᚔᚉ᚜
Grace	᚛ᚌᚏᚐᚉᚓ᚜

The Letters Ogham Never Had

Irish had no use for half of English's alphabet. So J, K, V, W, X and Y all had to borrow. P came late too, with its own added sign, and the tool uses that. Here's every swap, because you shouldn't have to guess what happened to your name.

English	Ogham	Borrowed from
K	ᚉ	C, the same hard sound
J	ᚌ	G, the nearest sound
V	ᚃ	F, a close sound
W	ᚃ	F, which may have started out as a w
X	ᚉᚄ	C plus S
Y	ᚔ	I
P	ᚚ	A later added letter

What Went Wrong on My First Run

Patrick came out with two C signs in a row, since my first pass read the c and the k as two sounds, which no carver with a sore wrist would ever do. One rule fixed it. NG has its own letter, but only with no vowel after it. King gets one sign. Finger keeps n and g apart. Then I checked backward. The word ogam matched the strokes at the top of Wikipedia's article, and the stone word maqi, meaning son of, read back clean.

Reading back loses things. Kate returns as cate, K and C sharing a sign. Victor comes back as fictor. Finn ends on two N signs, and I kept that, because your family's spelling beats a stonecutter's wrist. Niamh keeps its m and h though it sounds like Neev. Mix Ogham and English in one paste and the English just falls through.

Cormac was my cleanest check. Every letter has its own sign, so it reads back exactly. Y was the hard call. Vowel in Mary, consonant in yes, and both get the I sign, as Irish spelling has no y. Aoife looks long in strokes. Three vowels up front, two beats out loud. Bridget worried me. D and G look close from a distance, and on a small ring a jeweler could cut one stroke too few.

Word gaps surprised me. Ogham has its own space mark, and some fonts draw it as a stretch of the stem line while others leave it blank, so the same two words can look joined up on your phone and split on your laptop. I kept the proper mark anyway, since that's the character a font expects to find there.

Where I'd Use It, and Where I Wouldn't

Wedding ring? Dog tag? Cottage sign? Lovely. Tattoo? One warning. A saying in English stays English, only in strokes. Want real Irish? Ask an Irish speaker first, then spell that. Real stones run bottom to top along an edge, so turn your design on its side.

Into old scripts? Viking carvers get the Rune Translator, and Irish English gets the Irish Slang Translator. Everything else? The translators page. Wikipedia's Ogham article has the deep history.

Ogham Questions, Answered

What is Ogham used for today? Rings and tattoos. Nobody writes letters in it anymore, and I can't blame them.

Is Ogham Irish? Yes. It was made for early Irish, though Pictish in Scotland used it a little too.

How do you pronounce Ogham? OG-um in English. Modern Irish drops the g, so it's closer to OH-um, and both are fine by me.

Why is it called the Celtic tree alphabet? Medieval lists tied many letters to trees. Then Robert Graves made the idea famous in The White Goddess.

Does Google Translate do Ogham? No. Ogham's a way of writing, not a language, so Google has nothing to translate.

Who invented Ogham? Nobody knows. Some scholars say a secret code against Rome. Others say early Christians wanting to write Irish.