About Ogham Lore

What We Do

Ogham Lore is a resource for anyone interested in the ancient Irish writing system — whether you are researching a tattoo, studying Celtic heritage, visiting standing stones, or just curious about one of the oldest forms of written Irish.

We maintain a database of over 400 recorded Ogham stones with inscriptions, translations, coordinates, and photographs. We run a free online translator that converts modern names and words into Ogham script. We publish guides on the history and linguistics of the script, travel guides to visitable stone sites, and a daily Word of the Day series on YouTube.

Why Ogham?

Ogham is the oldest surviving form of written Irish — predating the Latin alphabet's widespread adoption on the island by centuries. The inscriptions on standing stones are not decorative. They are records: names, lineages, territorial markers, and the occasional puzzle that linguists are still working on. Reading them connects you directly to the people who carved them, somewhere between 400 and 700 AD.

Most of those stones are still standing in the fields, graveyards, and coastal headlands where they were placed. Many of them have never been moved. That is remarkable. Ogham Lore exists partly to help people find them.

Our Approach

We try to be accurate without being dry. The inscriptions have proper academic editions — primarily Robert Macalister's 1945 Corpus Inscriptionum Insularum Celticarum and the ongoing OG(H)AM project at the University of Glasgow — and we draw on those where possible. Where we explain history or linguistics, we try to be honest about what is established, what is debated, and what is modern invention (the Celtic tree calendar, for instance).

Ogham is genuinely interesting without needing embellishment. The real history is strange and rich enough.

Get Involved

If you spot an error in a stone entry, have a photograph you would like to contribute, or know of a recorded stone that is not yet in our database, we would like to hear from you. The stone database is an ongoing project and new discoveries are still being made — the Kilgarvan stone in Co. Mayo was found in 2000, on a day's fieldwork.

You can also follow the daily Word of the Day series on YouTube, or find us on Instagram.

Get in touch →