City of Dis

Cosmicism without consolation

Writing systems Β· Ancient Near East

Write Your Name in Phoenician

Enter a modern name and the instrument will transliterate it with the supplied Phoenician key. The result is rendered both as image-derived glyphs and as genuine Unicode Phoenician characters.

Render your name Why Phoenician looks like Hebrew

Interactive instrument

Your name

Type a name below. The display updates as you type; pressing "Render & record" also stores the submitted name and transliteration in the Marina database.

Phoenician is an abjad, so a modern English or European name cannot always be converted letter-for-letter. This tool follows the supplied key and makes restrained phonetic approximations where the key has no direct modern equivalent. In particular, E is approximated with yodh, O with waw, V with beth, X with kaph + samekh, and soft C with samekh.

Transliteration notes

How the converter reads modern spelling

  • A β†’ aleph
  • B / V β†’ beth
  • G / J β†’ gimel
  • D β†’ daleth
  • H β†’ he
  • W / U / O β†’ waw
  • Z β†’ zayin
  • I / Y / E β†’ yodh
  • K / hard C β†’ kaph
  • L β†’ lamed
  • M β†’ mem
  • N β†’ nun
  • S / soft C β†’ samekh
  • F / P / PH β†’ pe
  • Q β†’ qoph
  • R β†’ resh
  • SH / CH β†’ shin
  • T β†’ taw
  • X β†’ kaph + samekh

The key also contains heth, teth, ayin and tsade. Ordinary English spelling does not distinguish those sounds reliably, so the automatic converter does not invent them.

Related reading: the resemblance between Phoenician and Hebrew is historical, not coincidental. See Why Phoenician Looks Like Hebrew for the family relationship, letter-by-letter comparison and the distinction between Phoenician, Paleo-Hebrew and modern square Hebrew.

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