Free online translator for converting English names to Tifinagh (ⵜⵉⴼⵉⵏⴰⵖ)
Want to change a letter or write more? Type it on the Tifinagh keyboard.
Tifinagh is the alphabet of the Amazigh (Berber) languages of North Africa. The form taught in Moroccan schools today, Neo-Tifinagh as standardised by IRCAM in 2003, has 33 letters, vowels included, and is written left to right.
The oldest ancestor of Tifinagh is the Libyco-Berber alphabet, carved on rock faces and funerary stones across North Africa and the Sahara. Its best-dated example is the bilingual Punic and Libyan inscription from the mausoleum at Dougga, in present-day Tunisia, from the second century BCE. Like Phoenician, that script wrote consonants only. One branch never stopped being used: the Tuareg of the Sahara and the Sahel kept their Tifinagh for messages, love poetry and inscriptions on jewellery and rock, written in any direction that suited the surface.
Modern Tifinagh grew from that Tuareg tradition. In the late 1960s the Académie Berbère in Paris adapted it for the northern Amazigh languages and added letters for vowels, giving what is now called Neo-Tifinagh. When Morocco founded the Institut Royal de la Culture Amazighe (IRCAM) in 2001, it fixed one standard: 33 letters, written left to right, with vowel letters for a, i and u, a letter ⴻ for the short schwa, and a raised sign ⵯ for labialised consonants such as ⴳⵯ and ⴽⵯ. Since 2003 it has been the script in which Tamazight is taught in Moroccan schools, and Tamazight became an official language of Morocco in the 2011 constitution.
In Algeria Tamazight is an official language too, since 2016, but it is mostly written in a Latin alphabet, especially for Kabyle, with Tifinagh used for signs, emblems and identity. That is why the same name can be met in three scripts: Latin, Arabic and Tifinagh. This page writes the Tifinagh form from whichever of those you start with.
Tamazight has its own sounds and no letters for o, p or v, so a name is written by how it sounds in IRCAM letters, not letter for letter.
Most names typed here are spelled the French way, as names from the Maghreb usually are on paper, so the tool reads Latin as French spelling: Hicham is ⵀⵉⵛⴰⵎ, Youssef ⵢⵓⵙⴻⴼ, Rachid ⵔⴰⵛⵉⴷ, Khadija ⵅⴰⴷⵉⵊⴰ. Those rules were checked against the spellings Tamazight writers have given these names. English names that a pronouncing dictionary knows are written by their English sound instead, so Michael is ⵎⴰⵢⴽⴻⵍ rather than a letter-for-letter mi-ch-a-e-l.
A Latin spelling cannot show everything. Mohamed is written ⵎⵓⵃⵎⵎⴰⴷ by Tamazight writers, with the emphatic ⵃ of the Arabic ḥa and a doubled m, and Fatima is ⴼⴰⵟⵉⵎⴰ with the emphatic ⵟ; nothing in the French spelling says so. For the names where Tamazight writers' own spelling is published, the tool uses it. For any other name you can type the IRCAM Latin letters directly: Ḥassan gives ⵃⴰⵙⴰⵏ, where Hassan gives ⵀⴰⵙⴰⵏ.
Typing in Arabic works the other way round. Arabic shows every consonant, emphatics included, but usually leaves short vowels out, so the tool reads حسن as ḥsn and writes ⵃⵙⵏ. The reading appears in a box under your name; add the vowels there, ḥasan, and the Tifinagh follows. If the Arabic carries vowel marks they are used, so مُحَمَّد is read muḥammad.
Tapez votre prénom en lettres latines ou en arabe, et l'outil l'écrit en tifinagh, l'alphabet amazigh normalisé par l'IRCAM en 2003 et enseigné dans les écoles marocaines. L'orthographe latine est lue comme du français, puisque c'est ainsi que la plupart des prénoms du Maghreb s'écrivent sur les papiers : ch et sh donnent ⵛ, kh donne ⵅ, gh donne ⵖ, ou donne ⵓ, dj donne ⵊ, et un e muet final ne s'écrit pas. Hicham devient ⵀⵉⵛⴰⵎ, Youssef ⵢⵓⵙⴻⴼ, Khadija ⵅⴰⴷⵉⵊⴰ.
Le tamazight possède des consonnes emphatiques que l'orthographe française ne montre pas. Pour les obtenir, tapez les lettres latines de l'IRCAM : ḥ, ṭ, ṣ, ḍ, ẓ, ṛ et ɛ donnent ⵃ, ⵟ, ⵚ, ⴹ, ⵥ, ⵕ et ⵄ. Ḥassan s'écrit ainsi ⵃⴰⵙⴰⵏ. Vous pouvez aussi taper le prénom en arabe : l'outil affiche d'abord sa lecture en lettres latines dans une case modifiable, car l'arabe n'écrit pas toujours les voyelles brèves ; ajoutez-les si besoin, et le tifinagh suit.
Pour les prénoms dont les auteurs amazighophones ont publié une graphie, comme Mohamed (ⵎⵓⵃⵎⵎⴰⴷ) ou Fatima (ⴼⴰⵟⵉⵎⴰ), c'est cette graphie qui est utilisée. Il s'agit d'une transcription et non d'une traduction : votre prénom reste le même, seules les lettres changent.
Here are examples of common English names transliterated to Tifinagh:
Explore your name in other writing systems:
Type it in the box above, in Latin letters or in Arabic. Latin is read as French spelling, which is how most names from Morocco and Algeria are written on paper, and English names the tool recognises are written by their English sound. The Tifinagh appears as you type; copy it or save it as an image.
Yes. The tool reads the Arabic into Latin letters first and shows that reading in a box under the name. Arabic usually leaves out short vowels, so محمد comes out as mḥmd and its Tifinagh as ⵎⵃⵎⴷ; type the vowels into the box, muḥammad, and the Tifinagh updates. If you type the Arabic with its vowel marks, they are read directly.
Tamazight, like Arabic, has emphatic consonants, pronounced further back in the mouth, and IRCAM gives each its own letter: ⵃ ḥ, ⵟ ṭ, ⵚ ṣ, ⴹ ḍ, ⵥ ẓ and ⵕ ṛ. A French spelling does not show them, so Hassan and Ḥassan look the same in Latin. Type the dotted letter, or type the name in Arabic, to get the emphatic.
Because Tamazight has no such sounds. Its vowels are a, i and u, with a short schwa written ⴻ, so an o is written ⵓ, as Marco is ⵎⴰⵕⴽⵓ. Foreign p and v take the nearest letters, ⴱ and ⴼ. Some Neo-Tifinagh traditions outside the IRCAM standard add extra letters for them; this tool keeps to the standard taught in schools.
Related, not identical. Tuareg Tifinagh is the old consonant-only script, still used in the Sahara and the Sahel, with regional letter forms and no fixed direction. The tool writes Neo-Tifinagh in the IRCAM standard, the one used in Moroccan schools and on public signs, which adds vowel letters and is written left to right.
The letter ⵣ, yaz, the sound z. It is the first consonant of Amaziɣ, the name Imazighen use for themselves, often glossed as free man, and it stands in red on the blue, green and yellow Amazigh flag. In IRCAM Tifinagh it is an ordinary letter, so it appears in any name with a z, such as Zineb, ⵣⵉⵏⴻⴱ.
No. It writes your name in Tifinagh letters, keeping the name itself. Some names do have Amazigh forms or Amazigh equivalents, and many Amazigh given names, such as Massinissa, Tilelli or Yuba, are names in their own right; to use one of those, type it here and it will be written in Tifinagh like any other.
On current Android, iOS, Windows and macOS, yes: all four ship a font with the Tifinagh block, and this page loads Noto Sans Tifinagh as well. On an older system the letters can show as empty boxes when you paste them elsewhere. Saving the result as an image avoids that, since the picture carries the letters with it.