Ogham is an early medieval alphabet used chiefly to write Primitive and Old Irish, surviving today mostly as carvings on standing stones across Ireland and western Britain. Its letters, called feda, are formed from groups of one to five strokes that cross or touch a central stem line. This free tool maps each Latin letter to its Ogham Unicode character so you can render names and phrases in this striking ancient script instantly, with no upload.
A brief history of the script
Ogham inscriptions date from roughly the 4th to 7th centuries CE, with most examples found in Munster and Leinster in Ireland, plus concentrations in Wales, Scotland, and southwest England. The inscriptions are almost exclusively personal names and ownership claims — essentially the Twitter handles of early medieval Ireland. The longest surviving inscriptions are around 50 characters.
The script was likely designed for carving along a stone edge, which is why it uses a stem line: the edge of the stone itself served as the spine, and notches cut into or across it formed the letters. This design makes Ogham uniquely legible even on eroded stones.
The four classic letter families
The twenty original Ogham letters (feda) are divided into four groups called aicmí (singular aicme), each named after its first letter:
| Aicme | Letters | Strokes |
|---|---|---|
| Aicme Beithe (B) | B, L, F, S, N | 1–5 strokes to the right of the stem |
| Aicme hÚatha (H) | H, D, T, C, Q | 1–5 strokes to the left of the stem |
| Aicme Muine (M) | M, G, Ng, Z, R | 1–5 strokes diagonally across the stem |
| Aicme Ailme (A) | A, O, U, E, I | 1–5 notches through the stem |
Five later letters called forfeda were added to handle sounds borrowed from Latin and Greek, including diphthongs and the letter P, which was absent from the oldest Irish.
How it works
Encoding processes your text letter by letter and substitutes each one with its corresponding Ogham Unicode character (fid). Letters that never existed in early Irish — such as J, V, and W — are mapped to the closest available sound: V becomes the F fid (ᚃ), and Q maps to the ceirt fid (ᚊ), its phonetic equivalent.
Spaces are rendered with the dedicated Ogham space mark (ᚚ), and you can optionally wrap the whole line in the feather mark (᚛) and reversed feather mark (᚜) that traditionally framed an inscription on a carved stone. Digits, punctuation, and any other unmapped characters pass through unchanged.
Reading direction and modern use
Ogham was historically read from bottom to top when carved vertically on a stone edge, or left-to-right when running horizontally along a lintel or horizontal inscription. In Unicode text it is displayed left to right, which matches the horizontal variant.
For an authentic stone-monument look, enable the feather marks. The encoder is used for tattoos and body art, Celtic-themed game design and lore, jewellery and decorative work, academic study of epigraphy, and creative writing set in early medieval Ireland. Everything runs locally in your browser — your text is never sent to a server.