Free online translator for converting English names to Hebrew (עברית)
Hebrew is an ancient Semitic language revived as a modern language in the 19th-20th centuries. The Hebrew alphabet (aleph-bet) consists of 22 consonants written right-to-left.
Hebrew, like Arabic, is an abjad: the twenty-two letters are consonants, and vowels are supplied by the reader or marked with the niqqud dot system used mainly in children's books, poetry, dictionaries and religious texts. Ordinary Hebrew — newspapers, signage, correspondence — carries no vowel marks at all. A foreign name written without niqqud is therefore genuinely underdetermined, and Israelis routinely add the marks when a name would otherwise be unguessable.
Five letters take a different shape at the end of a word: כ becomes ך, מ becomes ם, נ becomes ן, פ becomes ף and צ becomes ץ. These final forms, called sofit, are not optional stylistic variants — using the medial form at the end of a name looks plainly wrong. Any name ending in one of those five sounds has to switch shape, which is why the last letter of a transliterated name often looks unrelated to the same letter earlier in the word.
Hebrew is the script of a continuous three-thousand-year textual tradition, and a large share of European given names originated in it. Anyone named John, Joseph, Michael, David, Sarah, Rachel, Miriam, Jacob or Elizabeth has a Hebrew name that travelled through Greek and Latin and came back altered. For these, the original form — יוחנן, יוסף, מיכאל, דוד, שרה — is the authentic spelling, and it will differ from what phonetic transliteration of the English pronunciation produces.
Hebrew transliteration of English names focuses on consonant sounds, with vowels either implied or marked with nikud. Since Hebrew doesn't have exact matches for some English sounds, approximations are used.
Modern Israeli Hebrew has merged several distinctions the writing system still preserves, which affects transliteration choices. א and ע are both silent or glottal in modern speech, כ and ק are both k, ט and ת are both t, and ס and ש (in its left-dot form) are both s. For a foreign name, more than one spelling is often defensible and Israelis themselves will disagree about which looks better.
The consonants that cause difficulty are th, which does not exist and becomes ת or ס, and the English w, which is normally written ו — the same letter used for v. J is the other problem: Hebrew has no j sound, so it is written ג׳ with a geresh mark, a modern convention that also produces ז׳ for the zh sound and צ׳ for ch. Without the geresh, George would read as Georg with a hard g.
Here are examples of common English names transliterated to Hebrew:
Explore your name in other writing systems:
Use our Hebrew translator tool above. Type your English name and it converts to Hebrew script using standard transliteration rules. The tool handles right-to-left text automatically.
The mark (') is called geresh (׳) or gershayim (״). It's added to letters to represent foreign sounds not in Hebrew, like ג׳ for 'j' sound or צ׳ for 'ch'. This is standard for transliterating foreign names.
Modern Hebrew text typically omits nikud (vowel marks). Vowels are either implied from context or represented by consonant letters (א, ה, ו, י) that double as vowel indicators. This is normal!
Yes! Israelis are very familiar with foreign names transliterated into Hebrew. Common Western names have well-established Hebrew spellings that everyone recognizes.
Our tool follows standard Hebrew transliteration used in Israel. However, for official documents like visas or ID cards, verify with the specific Israeli authority as they may have official spelling preferences.
Five Hebrew letters take a distinct final form at the end of a word: כ→ך, מ→ם, נ→ן, פ→ף, צ→ץ. Using the medial shape at the end of a name is incorrect.
Many European names do. John, Joseph, Michael, David, Sarah, Rachel, Jacob and Elizabeth all began as Hebrew names and reached English through Greek and Latin. The original form is more authentic than re-transliterating the English pronunciation.
Hebrew lacks both sounds. Modern convention adds a geresh mark: ג׳ for j, צ׳ for ch and ז׳ for zh. Without the geresh, a name like George reads with a hard g.