If you have ever wanted to write your name in runes, carve a word into a piece of wood, or simply understand how those angular Norse symbols work as letters, this is the page for you. The rune alphabet is not a secret code or a mystical cipher. It is a genuine writing system that people used for well over a thousand years to record names, mark ownership, remember the dead, and, yes, work a little magic.
Here you will find the full A to Z chart mapping English letters to their closest runes, a plain walkthrough of how to write a name by sound, and honest guidance on the translators and fonts you may have already tried. What you will not find here is the deep history or the divination side of things. For the origins and story of the runes, visit our guide to the Elder Futhark. For what each rune means in a reading, see our rune meanings reference. This page stays focused on one thing: putting runes on the page.
Let us start with what the rune alphabet actually is.
The Rune Alphabet Explained
Before runes were ever cast for guidance, they were letters. The people of early Germanic and Norse cultures used them to write, the same way we use the Latin letters you are reading now. Each rune carried a sound, and stringing those sounds together spelled words.
The oldest and most widely used runic system is the Elder Futhark, and it holds 24 runes. The name itself is a clue to how it worked. Just as we say “alphabet” after the first Greek letters alpha and beta, “Futhark” comes from the sounds of its first six runes: F, U, TH, A, R, K. Every rune had a name that began with its sound, so Fehu gave the F, Uruz gave the U, and so on down the row.
That double life matters. A single rune could be a letter in a word or a symbol loaded with meaning, depending on how it was being used. When someone carved a memorial stone, the runes were spelling language. When someone scratched a rune onto an amulet for protection, the same shape was doing symbolic work. On this page we care about the first job, the writing one. If you want the full history of how these letters came to be and how they spread across Scandinavia and beyond, our Elder Futhark guide covers that ground in depth.
There are a couple of quirks that make runic writing feel different from typing on a keyboard. Runes were built for carving, so their forms are made of straight lines and diagonals with almost no curves. Curves are hard to cut into wood, bone, or stone, and that practical constraint shaped every letter you see in the chart below. Early carvers also did not always leave spaces between words, and they sometimes wrote in whichever direction suited the surface, occasionally even reversing letters. You do not have to imitate any of that to write in runes today, but it helps explain why old inscriptions can look so different from a clean modern chart.
Now for the part most people come looking for: the chart.
The Rune Alphabet Chart (A to Z)
Here is the Elder Futhark laid out as a reference, with each English letter or sound matched to its rune and the rune’s traditional name. Keep this beside you while you spell anything out.
| English Letter | Rune | Rune Name |
|---|---|---|
| F | ᚠ | Fehu |
| U | ᚢ | Uruz |
| TH (þ) | ᚦ | Thurisaz |
| A | ᚨ | Ansuz |
| R | ᚱ | Raidho |
| K / hard C | ᚲ | Kenaz |
| G | ᚷ | Gebo |
| W | ᚹ | Wunjo |
| H | ᚺ | Hagalaz |
| N | ᚾ | Nauthiz |
| I | ᛁ | Isa |
| J / Y | ᛃ | Jera |
| EI | ᛇ | Eihwaz |
| P | ᛈ | Perthro |
| Z / -R | ᛉ | Algiz |
| S | ᛋ | Sowilo |
| T | ᛏ | Tiwaz |
| B | ᛒ | Berkano |
| E | ᛖ | Ehwaz |
| M | ᛗ | Mannaz |
| L | ᛚ | Laguz |
| NG | ᛜ | Ingwaz |
| D | ᛞ | Dagaz |
| O | ᛟ | Othala |
A quick word on the letters that seem to be missing. The Elder Futhark has 24 runes, and the modern English alphabet has 26 letters, so the two do not line up one to one. There is no separate rune for C, Q, V, X, or Y. You work around each one by sound:
- C takes Kenaz (ᚲ) for a hard C as in “cat,” or Sowilo (ᛋ) for a soft C as in “city.”
- Q becomes Kenaz (ᚲ), or Kenaz plus Wunjo (ᚲᚹ) to capture the “kw” sound.
- V uses Wunjo (ᚹ), the same rune that carries W.
- X splits into Kenaz plus Sowilo (ᚲᛋ) for the “ks” sound.
- Y borrows Isa (ᛁ) when it sounds like a vowel, or Jera (ᛃ) when it sounds like the Y in “yes.”
One more thing to notice: TH is a single rune, Thurisaz (ᚦ). English writes that sound with two letters, but the runes give it one. That small fact is your first hint that writing in runes is about sounds, not spelling, which is exactly what the next sections build on.
The Different Rune Alphabets
The Elder Futhark is the most popular runic system today, but it was never the only one. Over the centuries the runes changed shape and number as the languages that used them changed. If you have searched for a “Viking alphabet” or a “Norse alphabet,” you were almost certainly looking at one of these.
There are three main runic alphabets worth knowing:
- Elder Futhark (roughly 150 to 800 CE): The 24-rune system in the chart above. This is the one most modern readers and writers use, and the one this page is built around.
- Younger Futhark (roughly 800 to 1100 CE): The runes of the Viking Age. Oddly, it shrank to only 16 runes even as the language grew more complex, so each rune had to cover more sounds. When people say “Viking runes,” this is usually what they mean.
- Anglo-Saxon Futhorc (roughly 400 to 1100 CE): The system used in early England and Frisia. It grew in the other direction, expanding to 28 and eventually 33 runes to fit the sounds of Old English.
So when someone talks about the “Norse alphabet” or the “Viking alphabet,” they are usually pointing at the Elder or Younger Futhark without naming it precisely. For most name-writing and modern practice, the Elder Futhark is the standard choice, and it is what our tools and charts default to.
Why does the Elder Futhark win by default? Two reasons. First, its 24 runes give you close to a full set of sounds, so you rarely have to force one rune to cover several. The Younger Futhark, with only 16 runes, makes a single rune stand in for both a hard and a soft sound, which gets ambiguous fast for a beginner. Second, the Elder Futhark is the system most modern rune books, decks, and courses teach, so a name written in it will look familiar to anyone else who studies runes. If you have a specific heritage reason to prefer the Viking-Age or Old English forms, the other two systems are worth the extra study. For everyone else, starting with the Elder Futhark keeps things clear.
If you want to go deeper on any one system, our Elder Futhark guide is the main hub, and you can explore the Younger Futhark runes and the Anglo-Saxon runes on their own pages.
With the systems sorted, let us write an actual name.
How to Write Your Name in Runes
Here is the single most important rule, and it trips up almost everyone at first. You write a name in runes by its sound, not by swapping each written letter for a rune. English spelling is famously messy, full of silent letters and doubled-up sounds, and the runes simply do not care about any of that. They record what you hear.
Let us walk through a real example with the name Erik.
Say the name out loud and listen to the sounds in order: “E,” “R,” “I,” “K.” Four sounds, four runes.
- E is a clean vowel sound, so it takes Ehwaz (ᛖ).
- R is the rolling R sound, which is Raidho (ᚱ).
- I here sounds like the “ih” in “sit,” so it takes Isa (ᛁ).
- K is a hard K, which is Kenaz (ᚲ).
Put them together and Erik becomes ᛖᚱᛁᚲ.
Now compare that to a trickier name like Sophie. If you swapped letter for letter, you might reach for a P and an H and an E on the end. But by sound the name is really “S,” “O,” “F,” “EE.” The “ph” is an F sound, so it takes Fehu (ᚠ), and the silent final “e” disappears entirely. Sophie comes out as ᛋᛟᚠᛁ (S, O, F, and Isa doing duty for the long “ee” sound).
That is the whole method. Speak the name slowly, break it into the sounds you actually make, and match each sound to its rune using the chart above. A few honest caveats to keep in mind:
- There is no C, Q, V, X, or Y rune, so those letters get handled by sound as shown earlier.
- Double letters usually collapse into one rune, since you only say the sound once.
- Because it comes down to how you personally hear a name, two thoughtful people can spell the same name slightly differently, and both can be right.
A few more names show how the sound rule plays out in practice. Anna is simple: “A,” “N,” “A,” with the double N collapsing into one, so it becomes ᚨᚾᚨ. Chloe looks intimidating with its “ch” and silent “e,” but by sound it is “K,” “L,” “OH,” giving you ᚲᛚᛟ. Max ends in that “ks” sound with no rune of its own, so it splits into Kenaz and Sowilo: ᛗᚨᚲᛋ. Once you start listening for sounds instead of staring at letters, the tricky spellings stop being a problem.
If you want a keepsake or a carving, take one more slow pass before you commit. Say the finished runes back to yourself and check that each one matches a sound you truly make. It is easy to leave in a rune for a letter you do not actually pronounce, and a quiet re-read catches it. There is no single official spelling handed down for modern names, so the goal is a version that honestly reflects how the name sounds when you say it.
That interpretive freedom is exactly why online translators so often disagree with each other, which brings us to the tools.
Rune Translators and Converters
A rune translator is a handy shortcut, and it can get you a beautiful result in seconds. It helps to understand what one is actually doing under the hood, because that explains why three different tools can hand you three different answers for the same word.
Most converters do one of two things. The simpler ones perform a direct letter swap, dropping in a rune for each Latin letter you type. The better ones attempt to transliterate by sound, following the same logic you just used for Erik. Neither approach can fully capture how a name is pronounced, and each one makes its own choices about the tricky letters. One tool might turn your C into Kenaz while another reaches for Sowilo. One might keep a silent letter while another drops it.
None of that means the tools are broken. It means transliteration is an adaptation rather than an exact science, and there is genuine room for interpretation. Treat any converter’s output as a thoughtful starting point, then check it against the chart and your own ear. If a rune does not match a sound you actually make when you say the word, trust your ear and adjust.
A good habit is to run your word through a translator, then hold its answer up against the A to Z chart on this page. Where the tool and the chart agree, you can feel confident. Where they differ, you have found one of those sound-based judgment calls, and you get to decide which rune better matches how you say the word. That small step turns a black-box converter into a learning tool, and it means you understand your own runes rather than trusting a screen.
We are building a free interactive tool for exactly this purpose. You will be able to type a word and see it rendered in Elder Futhark runes at our rune translator, with the sound-based logic built in so you can learn as you go.
Once you have your runes, you will want to actually use them, and that is where fonts and keyboards come in.
Rune Fonts, Keyboards, and Copy-Paste
The best-kept secret about runes is how easy they are to type once you know one fact: runes are standard Unicode characters. They live in the same big library of digital symbols as your everyday letters and emoji. That means you do not need any special software to use them in a document, a message, or a design.
The simplest method is copy and paste. Every rune in the chart above is a real character, so you can highlight ᚠ or ᚨ or any of them, copy it, and paste it wherever you like. It will display anywhere that supports Unicode, which is nearly everywhere.
A few practical notes for going further:
- Rune fonts exist if you want a particular carved or hand-drawn look, but you do not need one just to display runes. The Unicode glyphs render on their own using the fonts already on your device.
- Phone keyboards can be extended with rune input through certain keyboard apps, though for occasional use most people find it easier to copy the glyphs from a chart like the one above.
- If a rune ever shows up as an empty box, that just means the specific font in that app lacks the runic characters. Switching apps or fonts usually fixes it.
The runic block in Unicode covers all three of the alphabets discussed above, so the same copy-paste trick works whether you are writing in Elder Futhark, Younger Futhark, or the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc. When you save a document, keep it in a format that preserves the encoding, such as plain UTF-8 text, so the glyphs travel intact if you move the file to another device. And if you plan to hand your runes to a designer or an engraver, send the actual characters rather than a screenshot, so they can set the type cleanly at any size.
Between the chart, the sound-based method, and simple copy-paste, you have everything you need to start writing. Here are the questions people ask most.
Rune Alphabet FAQ
What is the rune alphabet?
The rune alphabet is a writing system used by early Germanic and Norse peoples, where each rune stands for a sound and functions as a letter. The most common version is the Elder Futhark, which has 24 runes. Long before runes were used for divination, they were simply the letters people wrote with.
How do you write your name in runes?
You write a name in runes by sound, not by spelling. Say the name slowly, break it into the individual sounds you make, and match each sound to its rune using an Elder Futhark chart. For example, “Erik” becomes ᛖᚱᛁᚲ. Silent letters drop out, and double letters usually become a single rune.
Is there a rune for every English letter?
No. The Elder Futhark has 24 runes and English has 26 letters, so there is no direct rune for C, Q, V, X, or Y. Each of those is written by sound instead: C becomes Kenaz or Sowilo, V becomes Wunjo, X becomes Kenaz plus Sowilo, and so on. The TH sound is a single rune, Thurisaz.
What is the difference between the rune alphabets?
The three main systems are the Elder Futhark (24 runes, the standard today), the Younger Futhark (16 runes, used in the Viking Age), and the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc (up to 33 runes, used in early England). Terms like “Viking alphabet” or “Norse alphabet” usually refer to the Elder or Younger Futhark.
Can I copy and paste rune symbols?
Yes. Runes are standard Unicode characters, so you can copy any rune from a chart and paste it into documents, messages, or designs. It will display anywhere that supports Unicode, which is nearly everywhere. If a rune appears as an empty box, the font in that app simply lacks runic characters, and switching fonts or apps usually solves it.