Beith

What is Beith?

Beith (pronounced approximately as its Latin equivalent, B) is one of the letters of the ancient Ogham alphabet, the edge-carved writing system used in early medieval Ireland and Britain. It belongs to the Aicme Beith — one of five groupings that make up the full 25-letter Ogham script.

In the traditional Celtic tree calendar associated with Ogham, Beith is linked to the Birch tree. Each Ogham letter carries not just a phonetic value but a natural symbol — a feature that makes Ogham unique among ancient European writing systems.

How to Write Beith

In the Aicme Beith, strokes are drawn to the right of the central stem line (the druim).

Ogham is traditionally written bottom-to-top along the edge of a standing stone. In modern horizontal use — as seen in tattoos, jewellery, and digital text — the script reads left-to-right.

The Unicode Character

Beith is encoded in Unicode as part of the Ogham block (U+1680–U+169F). The character for Beith is:

Names Containing This Sound

Here are some names that use the B sound — you can see Beith in the transliteration:

Try It in the Translator

Type any name or word into our free Ogham translator to see Beith and the other letters in action.