Free online translator for converting English names to Amharic (አማርኛ)
Amharic uses the Ge'ez script (Ethiopic), an ancient syllabary with 33 base characters, each having 7 forms for different vowels. It's the official language of Ethiopia.
Amharic is written in the Ge'ez script, also called Ethiopic or fidäl, which is the only writing system indigenous to Africa still in widespread everyday use. It descends from the Ancient South Arabian script and has been in continuous use for around two thousand years, originally for the Ge'ez liturgical language and now for Amharic, Tigrinya and several other Ethiopian and Eritrean languages.
The script is an abugida, but it works differently from the Indic ones. Instead of attaching a separate vowel mark to a consonant, each consonant has seven distinct forms, one for each vowel, with the vowel indicated by modifications to the letter shape itself — an added stroke, a shortened leg, a loop. There are no separate vowel signs to attach. The result is a syllabary-like grid of over two hundred characters, traditionally laid out as rows of consonants and columns of vowels.
Ge'ez originally ran right to left, like the South Arabian scripts it came from, and switched to left to right in the fourth century AD. It has its own numeral system inherited from Greek, and its own punctuation, including the distinctive word separator ፡ that traditionally divided words instead of a space, though modern Amharic increasingly uses ordinary spacing.
Amharic is a syllabary, meaning each character represents a consonant-vowel combination. Names are broken into syllables, and each syllable is written with the appropriate character form.
Because every consonant-vowel combination is a single character, transliterating a name means selecting the right character from the grid rather than combining a consonant with a vowel mark. A syllable is one character, which makes Amharic names compact on the page.
The sixth form in each row, the sädis, represents the consonant with either a very short vowel or no vowel at all, and this is what makes consonant clusters and final consonants possible. English names ending in a consonant use the sädis form. Amharic includes ejective consonants like Georgian, with no English equivalent, and lacks a distinct p in native vocabulary, though characters exist for it in borrowed words. English v is usually approximated with b.
Here are examples of common English names transliterated to Amharic:
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Use our Amharic translator above. Type your name in English and it converts to Ge'ez (Ethiopic) script using syllabic transliteration.
Ge'ez is the ancient Ethiopic script used for Amharic and several other Ethiopian languages. It's a syllabary where each character represents a consonant-vowel syllable.
Both are Semitic languages, so they share some linguistic features, but Amharic uses its own unique Ge'ez script rather than Arabic script.
Amharic has 231 characters: 33 base consonants, each with 7 variations for different vowel sounds.
Yes! Unlike most Semitic languages, Amharic is written left-to-right, making it easier for English speakers.
Each consonant has seven distinct shapes, one per vowel, with the vowel shown by modifying the letter itself rather than attaching a separate mark. There are over two hundred characters in total.
With the sixth form of the row, the sädis, which carries either a very short vowel or none. It is what makes consonant clusters and final consonants possible.
Yes. It is used for Tigrinya, Ge'ez itself as a liturgical language, and several other Ethiopian and Eritrean languages. It is the only indigenous African script in widespread daily use.