The Anglo-Saxon Futhorc is the runic script used in early medieval England, from roughly the 5th to the 11th century. It grew out of the older Germanic Elder Futhark, adding new runes to capture the extra vowel and consonant sounds of Old English and Old Frisian. This free tool maps each Latin letter to its closest Futhorc rune so you can render names and short phrases in authentic-looking runic Unicode, instantly and with no upload.
How it works
Encoding walks through your text one character at a time. Each Latin letter is replaced by the single Futhorc rune that historically carried the closest sound. For example A becomes ᚪ (āc), B becomes ᛒ (beorc), and both C and K map to ᚳ (cēn). The common digraph TH is handled first and mapped to the thorn rune ᚦ before the remaining letters are processed, since Old English wrote that single sound with one rune.
Because runes encode sounds rather than modern letters, the mapping is an approximation: it gives one rune per Latin letter rather than reconstructing true Old English spelling. Characters with no rune equivalent — digits, spaces, and punctuation — pass through unchanged so the output stays readable.
Tips and notes
For the most authentic look, write phonetically: “kw” sounds were historically written with the cweorð rune, and runes were carved without spaces between words. This tool keeps spaces for legibility. The result is ideal for tattoos, game lore, jewellery engraving, and learning exercises, but it is not a substitute for a scholarly transliteration of a specific Old English text. Everything runs locally in your browser — your text is never sent to a server.