Ogham

Converts a given input string to its Ogham equivalent. If you're interested in learning more about Ogham check out these articles:

• Ogham on Wikipedia
• Ogham by Balldrich Ballbarian

As an example, the string hello will become ᚛ᚆᚓᚂᚂᚑ᚜ if converted to Ogham. Typically Ogham is read from bottom to top so our hello example above would normally be rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise.

The best results are obtained by passing words in their Irish Gaelic form since the Irish alphabet is missing letters that occur in English and other alphabets. For example the English word "key" contains the letters 'k' and 'y' which don't appear in the Irish alphabet so no Ogham character exists for these; instead you could pass the Irish word "eochair" or pass the usePhonetics option to replace 'k' with 'q' and 'y' with 'i'.

Disclaimer: This module is still in development and results should be checked against with an Ogham reference such as those on Wikipedia and other websites

JavaScript Example

const ogham = require('ogham')
 
console.log(ogham.convert('ireland'))
 
// prints "᚛ᚔᚏᚓᚂᚐᚅᚇ᚜"

TypeScript/ES6 Example

import * as ogham from 'ogham'
 
console.log(ogham.convert('ireland'))
 
// prints "᚛ᚔᚏᚓᚂᚐᚅᚇ᚜"

API

convert(input: string, options: OghamOptions)

Converts the given input string to its ogham representation. Inputs must be A-Z characters without accents, e.g pass a instead of á. Pssing the letters j, k, v, w, x, and y will cause an error to be thrown unless the replaceMissingLetters option is passed - this is because these letters aren't present in the Irish alphabet.

Supported keys in the options Object are:

• addBoundary: Boolean - Determines if the begging ᚛ and ending ᚜ characters should be added.
• useForfeda: Boolean - This enables use of the Forfeda characters. For example, instead of ea being printed as ᚓᚐ it will be printed as ᚕ.
• usePhonetics - This setting will replace the following letters with phonetic equivalents since they don't occur in the Irish alphabet:
  • J => G
  • K => Q
  • V => F
  • W => UU
  • X => Z
  • Y => I

Below are some examples.

options.addBoundary

const convertedText = ogham.convert('ireland', {
  addBoundary: false
})
 
console.log(convertedText)
 
// prints "ᚔᚏᚓᚂᚐᚅᚇ" instead of the default "᚛ᚔᚏᚓᚂᚐᚅᚇ᚜"

options.usePhonetics

console.log(
  ogham.convert('keys', {
    usePhonetics: true
  })
)
// prints "᚛ᚊᚓᚔᚄ᚜" which is actually "qeis" since 'k' and 'y' need to be
// replaced with phonetically similar characters as they don't appear in the
// irish alphabet https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_orthography#Alphabet