Write Your Name in Elvish in Ten Minutes

You want to write your name in Elvish, but every place you go seems to make it harder than
it ought to be. Elvish writing looks beautiful and mysterious, but does it really have to be

impossible to understand? Why doesn't somebody just spell out the alphabet so you can
simply substitute the letters and get straight to the result? That's exactly what I've done here.
Learn to write your name in Elvish in ten minutes. It's not very hard.

Here's the alphabet.

That's it. (If you want details about where this all comes from, look at the bottom of this
page.) You only need to know a few more things and you're ready to go. The most important
thing is that vowels go above (or below) the consonants. That's what the gray arrows signify
in the alphabet shown above. You can put the vowels above the letter they follow (Quenya
style) or above the letter they precede (Sindarin style). Take your pick. I do the Quenya style.
Look at this example.

1. Write the name: ROBERT.

2. Shift the vowels up and to the left, so they

are above the letters they follow.

3. Substitute the letters using the alphabet

provided above. Notice there are two forms
for the letter R. One is for the R sound as in
RED. The other is for the R sound as in CAR.
The name ROBERT starts with the R-as-in-
RED sound and near its end it has the R-as-in-
CAR sound.

4. Here's the text notation. I find it useful to

use a plain text representation of the characters
when I'm explaining things via email. The
underscores at the beginning and end show
where the baseline is.

O E
_ R B R T _

5. All the examples on this page are use the

Quenya style, but here's the text notation for
Sindarin (not shown in calligraphy) so you can
see how the vowel positions shift to the right.

O E
_ R B R T _

Generally the vowels go above the consonants, but sometimes, in the case of Y and silent E,
they go below. Here's another example. This one includes a special symbol, a straight line
underneath the consonant, that indicates a doubled consonant. Use this "doubling symbol"
with any consonant.
1. Write the name: LYNNE.

2. Shift the vowels down and to the left, so

they are below the letters they follow.

3. Make letter combinations. Doubled

consonants can be combined into one space.

4. Substitute the letters using the alphabet

provided above. Use the bar underneath the N
to signify it is doubled.

5. Here's the text notation. Most of the action

occurs below the baseline. I'm using square
brackets to indicate letter combinations that
result in a single letterform.

_ L [NN] _
Y E
The straight line underneath is just one way to make one character do the work of two. There
are a number of Elvish letters that stand for two letters of our alphabet. Think of this as a
supplementary alphabet.

The line above a consonant means that a nasal N or M precedes the consonant in question.
In the next example, we use the nasal modifier and we see what to do with vowels when
there's no consonant in the right place to put it above.

1. Write the name: ANDY.

2. Shift the vowels. The Y goes down and to

the left. Since the letter A has no consonant to
slide above, it goes on a carrier, which is just a
straight line that fills in for the job a consonant
would normally do. Note that the carrier is just
a graphical convention and has no bearing on
pronunciation.

3. Make letter combinations using the

supplementary letters: N + D = ND.

4. Substitute the letters. The vowel

placeholder is a short straight line. The nasal N
preceding D is denoted by a straight line above
the D.

5. Here's the text notation. I'm using the colon

symbol : for the vowel carrier symbol.

A
_ : [ND] _
Y
Here's one last example with two different letter combinations.

1. Write the name: SHELDON.

2. Shift the vowels.

3. Make letter combinations using the

supplementary letters: S + H = SH. L + D
= LD.

4. Substitute the letters.

5. Here's the text notation.

E 0
_ [SH] [LD] N _
I am often asked how to handle double vowel situations. Remember to use the carrier as
shown above in the ANDY example. Here are some examples that illustrate some of the
situations that come up.

Name: ADRIAN
Text notation:
A I A
_ : D R : N _

Name: EILEEN
Text notation:
E I [EE]
_ : : L N _
Comment: This is a dramatic example of
doubled up vowels. The name starts with two
vowels, leaving us no choice but to use two
carriers in a row. We use a little artistic
freedom with the double E at the end, since
they fit nicely over the L. It would have been,
however, perfectly reasonable to spell it like
this.
Text notation:
E I E E
_ : : L : N _

Name: DIETRICH
Text notation:
I E I
_ D : T R [CH] _

Name: AMELIE
Text notation:
A E I
_ : M L _
E
Comment: Here again we're using a little
expressive freedom for compactness. The
silent E at the end is placed under the L and
assumed to follow the voiced I above the L.
You can always spell it like this if you want to
be absolutely clear.
Text notation:
A E I E
_ : M L : _
That's all you need to get started. If you take a real interest in Elvish and want to learn more,
there's a lot of good information out there for you.

Please be aware that there are many ways to write English words in Elvish. This is just the
one that I use. I have tried to keep it very simple here. There are dozens of sites that can lead
you through the nitty-gritty details. The best one I have come across yet is Tolkien Script
Publishing. You can learn about all details that I glossed over here.
Good luck!