Ogham Translator

What ogham is

Ogham is an alphabet made of strokes. Each letter is one to five lines or notches cut across or beside a stem line, which on a standing stone was usually the stone’s edge, read from the bottom up. It was used mostly to write early forms of Irish, and most of the roughly 400 surviving inscriptions, in Ireland and western Britain, date from about the 4th to the 6th century. Many of them are simply a person’s name and their father’s.

The letters come in four groups of five, called aicmí, named after their first letter. Medieval scholars later added a few extra letters, the forfeda, and linked the letter names with trees, which is why ogham is often called the Celtic tree alphabet. For some letters the tree link is doubtful.

How this tool spells English

Ogham has no letters for j, k, v, w, x or y, so this tool borrows the closest: k becomes coll (ᚉ), v and w become fearn (ᚃ), j and y become iodhadh (ᚔ), and x becomes coll and sail (ᚉᚄ). p uses peith (ᚚ), one of the later forfeda. ng is one letter, nGéadal (ᚍ). Words are separated by the ogham space mark, and feather marks (᚛ ᚜) open and close each line, as in many manuscripts. The words stay in English.

Before an ogham tattoo or carving

Check every letter against the chart, and remember that the result is English spelled in ogham, not Irish. For a name in Irish, check its Irish spelling first.