Ífín

What is Ífín?

Ífín (pronounced approximately as its Latin equivalent, IO) 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 Forfeda — one of five groupings that make up the full 25-letter Ogham script.

In the traditional Celtic tree calendar associated with Ogham, Ífín is linked to the Gooseberry. 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 Ífín

In the Forfeda, strokes are formed with more complex strokes crossing or angling across the stem — these are extended characters for sounds not in early Old Irish.

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

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

Names Containing This Sound

Here are some names that use the IO sound — you can see Ífín in the transliteration:

Try It in the Translator

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