Runic transliterator

Examples

"Astrid" in the Younger Futhark comes out as astrit: ᛏ writes both t and d. The Old Norse examples are real: Hlewagastiz holtijaz horna tawido is the maker's line on the Gallehus horn, and the Gormr line is the start of the smaller Jelling stone. Compare what the tool gives with what was carved: that check is on the methodology page.

Spelling, not sound

The tool works on letters, not on pronunciation, because it cannot know how you say a name. English spelling is full of silent letters and letters that stand for several sounds (the c in cat and city, the gh in night). Carvers wrote what they heard. For the most authentic result, spell the word as it sounds: Kathryn as Katrin, Phoebe as Fibi. A few English spellings are handled for you: th, ng, ph, ck, qu, sh, and c before e, i and y as s.

Elder Futhark (c. 150–750)

• The 24 runes cover most sounds of Proto-Norse, so the mapping is close to one rune per sound: ᚨ a, ᛖ e, ᛁ i, ᛟ o, ᚢ u.
• No runes for c, q, v or x: the tool writes k (ᚲ), kw, w or f, and ks. English v becomes ᚠ; in Old Norse input v is the w-sound, ᚹ.
• ng is one sound and has its own rune, ᛜ (ingwaz); th is ᚦ (thurisaz).
• ᛉ (algiz) wrote a z-sound that later became the Norse R. Type z, or R after a lower-case letter, to get it: holtijaz.
• Early carvers usually wrote a doubled consonant once and often ran words together without dividers; switch the divider to "space" or a dot as you prefer.
• English y at the start of a word before a vowel is ᛃ (j-sound); elsewhere it is ᛁ.

Younger Futhark (c. 750–1100)

Sixteen runes for a language with more sounds than the old row had runes, so each rune had to do several jobs. Viking-age carvers were not consistent, but these were the usual choices:

• No doubled runes. A doubled sound was carved once, often even across a word boundary.
• Nasals before stops were often left out: kumbl "monument" is kubl on the Jelling stone, konungr "king" is kunukR. The option drops m before b/p and n before t/d/k/g. Carvers did not always do this (stanta for standa on Rök), so it is off by default.
• ᛦ for final R. Danish and Swedish carvers wrote the -r of endings such as -r and -ar with ᛦ where it came from Proto-Norse z. Only Old Norse words have it, and only some endings; mark exactly where you want it by typing a capital R inside a word (runaR), the convention runologists use, or switch the option on for every word-final r.
• Long-branch or short-twig. Long-branch runes (often called Danish) are the common form on runestones; short-twig runes (Swedish-Norwegian) were quicker to carve and were used on wood and on some stones, such as Rök.

Anglo-Saxon Futhorc (c. 5th–11th century)

• Old English split the old a-rune: ᚪ āc for a, ᚫ æsc for æ, ᚩ ōs for o.
• Diphthongs and new vowels have runes of their own: ᛠ ēar for ea, ᛡ ior for io, ᚣ ȳr for y, ᛟ ēþel for œ/oe.
• ᛝ ing writes ng; ᛄ gēr the j-sound (and English y before a vowel at the start of a word); ᚳ cēn c and k; sc and sh become ᛋᚳ, as Old English spelled it.
• ᛉ eolhx had no sound of its own left in Old English; scribes used it for x, and so does the tool.

Medieval runes (c. 1100–1500)

By the 12th and 13th centuries runes had become a full alphabet matched to Latin letters, with dotted runes for e, d, g and p and new signs for the rest, so the tool writes one rune per letter. See the medieval runes page for each letter.