Write your name in runes the way a Viking carver would have cut it. Runes spell sounds, so this writes your English letters with the runes of the Viking Age (the Younger Futhark), or with the older Elder Futhark and the Anglo-Saxon Futhorc if you prefer. It is a letter-for-sound transliteration, not a translation into Old Norse, and every rune below comes with the reason it was chosen.
Letter by letter
Tap a rune to see why it was chosen.
Your free rune card
A printable PDF for : how runes work, your name rune by rune, and your name in all four alphabets. We'll email it once you confirm your address.
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Now get a Viking name →How Viking Runes Worked
The Vikings wrote with sixteen runes. Their alphabet, the Younger Futhark, had no letters for d, g, p or e as we use them, so the t-rune stood for d, the k-rune for g, the b-rune for p and the i- and u-runes did double duty for vowels. It had no true o either: for o, carvers used ᚬ (óss), a rune that first stood for a nasal a and came to stand for o. A doubled letter was carved once, so TT is one t-rune, and words were often separated with a dot or two. Our tool follows those habits and shows you each decision. For the long story, read How Did Vikings Get Their Names?, then give yourself one with the Viking Name Generator and carve it here.
Your Name in Runes: Which Alphabet?
Choose the Younger Futhark if you want your name the way a Viking would have carved it, around 800 to 1100. The long-branch runes were used across Denmark and much of the Viking world; the short-twig style is the same alphabet with quicker, simpler strokes, common in Sweden and Norway. The Elder Futhark is older, with 24 runes, and was used from about 150 to 800, long before the Vikings. The Anglo-Saxon Futhorc grew from it in England and has extra runes for English sounds, so it fits English names most closely.
Questions People Ask
No. It spells the sounds of your name with runes, the way you might write a foreign name in another alphabet. An Old Norse version of a name is a different thing, and our Viking Name Generator can give you one.
Carvers cut a doubled sound once and left out letters that make no sound, like the silent e at the end of Mike. The letter-by-letter strip under your result shows every choice.
Yes, download the image and use it. Before anything permanent, check the runes with someone you trust: one rune often stood for several sounds, so there can be more than one honest way to spell a name.
Sources
- “Younger Futhark”, “Elder Futhark” and “Anglo-Saxon runes”, Wikipedia (for orientation).
- “Rök runestone”, Wikipedia.
- The Unicode Standard, Runic block (U+16A0–U+16FF), for the rune characters.
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