Rune Translator

How this rune translator works

Each English letter is replaced by the rune for the nearest sound in the row you pick. TH becomes the thorn rune ᚦ and NG becomes ᛜ, the way the old carvers wrote those sounds. Letters with the same sound share a rune: C, K and Q all use the k-rune. Leave the menu on Elder Futhark to use it as an elder futhark translator, or switch rows at any time; your text stays in the box.

This is an English to rune translator for letters, not a translator into Old Norse or Old English. The words stay English. That is fine for a name, but if you want a real Old Norse phrase for a tattoo, a ring or a carving, check it with someone who knows the language first.

Elder Futhark alphabet

The Elder Futhark has 24 runes in three groups of eight, called ættir. It was used across Germanic Europe from about the 2nd to the 8th century. Rune names are reconstructed from later sources, so the meanings below are the usual scholarly readings, not certainties.

Viking rune translator: the Younger Futhark

If you want a viking rune translator or a norse rune translator, choose the Younger Futhark above. By about 800, at the start of the Viking Age, Scandinavians wrote with only 16 runes. Fewer runes meant each one stood for several sounds, which is why this row gives the same rune to I, E and J, and the same rune to U, V and W. Runestones such as the 10th-century Jelling stones in Denmark are written in this row.

Anglo-Saxon runes

In England and Frisia the runes grew instead of shrinking. The Anglo-Saxon futhorc added runes for new vowel sounds, such as ᚪ ac for A, ᚩ os for O and ᚣ yr for Y, and used ᚳ cen for the k sound. Choose "Anglo-Saxon futhorc" to use these; it also writes EA as ᛠ and NG as ᛝ.

Nordic rune translator from runes back to letters

Paste runes or tap them below to read them as letters. The reader knows the runes of all three rows. Where one rune stood for several sounds, it shows the options, for example I/E/J.

Tips before you carve or tattoo runes

• Spell by sound. "Phoebe" is F-E-B-E in runes; a silent letter gets no rune.
• Do not mix rows. An Elder Futhark name with one Younger Futhark rune is a modern mix no carver would have made.
• Runes were read left to right most of the time, but some inscriptions run right to left or turn back at the end of a line.
• Save the image and check it at the real size you need. Thin strokes like ᛁ can disappear on small engravings.

How we tested

Before publishing we checked all 43 runes and word dividers the tool uses against the Unicode 16 character names (for example RUNIC LETTER THURISAZ THURS THORN). We ran the page in Chromium at desktop width and at 375 px: no sideways scrolling of the page and no console errors; the wide Elder Futhark table scrolls inside its own box on phones. We typed "Thorin Ragnar" in all three rows: Elder ᚦᛟᚱᛁᚾ ᚱᚨᚷᚾᚨᚱ, Younger ᚦᚬᚱᛁᚾ ᚱᛅᚴᚾᛅᚱ, and in the futhorc "Sean" used the EA rune ᛠ. The two-dot divider gave ᛬ between words. We saved Odin as an image (299 × 240 px) and looked at it, and read ᚦᛟᚱ back as TH-O-R. Not tested yet: Safari on iPhone and Firefox.

Questions

Does this translate English into Old Norse?

No. It writes the letters of your English text with runes, which is called transliteration. Old Norse and Old English were real languages with their own words, so a sentence written in runes this way is still English. For a real Old Norse phrase, ask someone who knows the language before you carve or tattoo it.

Which runes did the Vikings use?

The Younger Futhark. By the start of the Viking Age, around 800, Scandinavians had cut the older 24-rune row down to 16 runes. The Elder Futhark is older, used from about the 2nd to the 8th century, so it was not the Viking alphabet even though many modern designs use it.

Why do some letters share one rune?

Runes were made for Germanic sounds, not for the English alphabet. C, K and Q all sound like k, so they use the same rune. The Younger Futhark has only 16 runes, so one rune covers several sounds: the same rune is used for I, E and J, and another for U, V, W and O-like sounds.

How were words separated in runic inscriptions?

Often not at all. When carvers did separate words they used one or more dots, short strokes or small crosses. Pick a word divider in the tool to copy that style.

Why do I see boxes instead of runes?

Your device has no font with runic letters. The page loads the free Noto Sans Runic font, and Windows 10 and 11 include runes in Segoe UI Historic. If you still see boxes, a content blocker may be stopping fonts.googleapis.com.