Initial-letter contraction
“name” in braille
Two cells for the whole word, however long it is — 4 letters here, a saving of 2 cells. “name” is 108th in the 5,000-word frequency list this site measures against.
Dots 5, then dots 1-3-4-5
Unicode ⠐⠝ — 4 letters in two cells
How to recognise it
Two cells for four letters, and it keeps working through names, username and named. It is one of the few here whose second cell is simply the word's own first letter.
The second cell is the letter n
The second cell is the word's own first letter — the simpler half of this list. The other nine use a groupsign instead.
Where it may appear inside a longer word
The rulebook uses it inside a longer word only where the letters are said as one syllable (Rules of Unified English Braille 10.7.5).
Whether the letters are one syllable is not something a translator can read off the spelling, so this site uses the sign wherever the letters occur, except in the words the rulebook itself writes without it — enamel, ornament, unamended and Vietnamese — and the same words with an ending added. This site also leaves it out of tournament and ornamental, which the rulebook does not name but which follow the same rule; liblouis 3.39.0 writes them the same way.
From the rulebook's own examples, as this site writes them. With the sign: nameable ⠐⠝⠁⠃⠇⠑; surname ⠎⠥⠗⠐⠝. Without it: enamel ⠢⠁⠍⠑⠇; ornament ⠕⠗⠝⠁⠰⠞; unamended ⠥⠝⠁⠍⠢⠙⠫.
As with every contraction, it is not used where its letters would reach across the join between the parts of a compound word (10.11).
Updated 27 September 2026. Until 18 September this section gave the positions — start, middle, end — where the sign agreed with the reference translator more often than not, and the translator followed those. It follows the rule above now; the survey explains what changed and why.
Longer words that keep it
3 words among the 5,000 commonest in English are written with this contraction inside them. These are some of them, and every one was taken from this site's own output rather than chosen by hand.
| Word | In braille (Grade 2) | Grade 1 | Grade 2 |
|---|---|---|---|
| names | 5 cells | 3 cells | |
| username | 8 cells | 5 cells | |
| named | 5 cells | 3 cells |
Words where it is written out instead
| Word | Written as | Why |
|---|---|---|
| tournament | the letters are not said as one syllable (10.7.5), so it is written n-a-ment; liblouis 3.39.0 writes it the same way |
The other 21 words under dots 5
The largest of the three prefix groups, so the prefix itself tells you little — the second cell does the work.
character, day, ever, father, here, know, lord, mother, one, ought, part, question, right, some, there, through, time, under, where, work, young.
In a whole book
In a count over the whole of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (26,439 words), this contraction is written 12 times and saves 24 cells. That is 0.07% of everything Grade 2 saves in the book, and ranks it 120th of the 158 contractions used.
The words it is written in: name (10), names (2).
Check your own text
Type “name” into the translator with Grade 2 selected to see both cells, or take the full list.
“name” in braille as an image
Both cells as a picture: dot 5, then dots 1, 3, 4 and 5 — the whole word in two cells rather than 4 letters.
