Ogham is the early Irish alphabet of strokes and notches cut along a line. Type a name below and see it written the way it would be carved, then copy it as Ogham text.
The classic alphabet has twenty letters in four groups of five, called aicmí (singular aicme, "family"). Each group is defined by where its strokes sit against the line, and the number of strokes tells you which letter in the group it is. The letter names below are the traditional ones; spelling varies between sources.
| Letter | Ogham | Name |
|---|---|---|
| B | Beith | |
| L | Luis | |
| F | Fearn | |
| S | Sail | |
| N | Nion |
| Letter | Ogham | Name |
|---|---|---|
| H | Úath | |
| D | Dair | |
| T | Tinne | |
| C | Coll | |
| Q | Ceirt |
| Letter | Ogham | Name |
|---|---|---|
| M | Muin | |
| G | Gort | |
| NG | nGéadal | |
| Z | Straif | |
| R | Ruis |
| Letter | Ogham | Name |
|---|---|---|
| A | Ailm | |
| O | Onn | |
| U | Úr | |
| E | Eadhadh | |
| I | Iodhadh |
What we can and can't say. The letter chart and the existence of the stones are well established. The tree associations, and the "tree calendar" built on them, are mostly a modern layer, so we give only the traditional letter names here. Letters the alphabet did not have (J, K, P, V, W, Y) are approximated by this converter, and that is a modern convention, not something attested on the stones.
Ogham turns up in the stories as well as on stone. In the tales it is a mark of learning and of the poets: the god Ogma is credited in later tradition with inventing it, and heroes such as Cú Chulainn are shown cutting messages in Ogham on a hoop or a stone. Those are medieval literary traditions, not historical records of who devised the script. Browse the full set of entries or read the Samhain guide.
Ogham is an early medieval alphabet used to write Primitive and Old Irish, and also found in western Britain. Each letter is a set of one to five strokes or notches cut along a central line, which on a standing stone is the edge of the stone itself.
The surviving stone inscriptions are generally dated from about the 4th to the 6th or 7th century CE. Scholars still debate exactly how and when the script was devised, so any single date for its invention should be treated with caution.
Most of the roughly four hundred surviving stones in Ireland carry little more than a personal name, often in a form meaning "of [name]" or "[name], son of [name]". They were most likely memorials or markers, not the long texts people sometimes imagine.
The medieval manuscript tradition does give the letters names, and many of those names are also the names of trees or plants (Beith is the birch, Dair the oak). The idea that Ogham was a tree alphabet tied to a calendar of tree signs is largely a modern one, so treat tree-based readings as a modern tradition and not as evidence about the original script.
It maps each letter of your name to the nearest Ogham letter. Ogham has no J, K, P, V, W or Y, so those are approximated and the converter tells you when it has done so. It writes left to right with a horizontal line, which is the modern convention; on stones Ogham is read upward along a vertical edge.