Tool
Your name in braille
Type any name and see it as braille cells, with every letter broken down and the dot numbers written out.
Your name will appear here as braille cells.
This tool spells the name out
The tool writes a name in Grade 1, letter by letter, so every letter of the name has a cell of its own.
It is a choice this tool makes, not a rule of braille. In a Grade 2 text a name is contracted like any other word: the Rules of Unified English Braille write Thomas with the sign for th, ⠠⠹⠕⠍⠁⠎, and Edith with the sign for ed, ⠠⠫⠊⠹ (10.4.1). Where a transcriber does not know how a name is said, the rulebook has guidelines for that case and asks for consistency within the transcription (10.12.8, 10.12.9). The translator shows the Grade 2 form. Until 2 October 2026 this page said names are always written uncontracted; that was wrong.
The first letter takes a capital sign, dot 6, placed immediately before it. A name in full capitals takes two capital signs before the word.
Count the cells before you order. A name with a capital letter is at least one cell longer in braille than in print, because the capital sign is a cell that corresponds to no printed letter. The bracelet maker lays this out as a bead pattern.
How long a name runs
Every name below is one cell longer than its letter count, because of the capital sign. That is the number that matters when you are ordering something with a fixed amount of space — a bracelet, a pendant, a label.
| Name | Letters | Cells | In braille |
|---|---|---|---|
| Emma | 4 | 5 | |
| Oliver | 6 | 7 | |
| Sophia | 6 | 7 | |
| James | 5 | 6 | |
| Charlotte | 9 | 10 | |
| Noah | 4 | 5 | |
| Amelia | 6 | 7 | |
| William | 7 | 8 | |
| Isabella | 8 | 9 | |
| Henry | 5 | 6 | |
| Mia | 3 | 4 | |
| Alexander | 9 | 10 | |
| Grace | 5 | 6 | |
| Benjamin | 8 | 9 | |
| Chloe | 5 | 6 | |
| Thomas | 6 | 7 | |
| Hannah | 6 | 7 | |
| Michael | 7 | 8 | |
| Sarah | 5 | 6 | |
| Daniel | 6 | 7 | |
| Ava | 3 | 4 | |
| Lucas | 5 | 6 | |
| Zoe | 3 | 4 | |
| Muhammad | 8 | 9 |
Your own name will follow the same rule. Type it into the tool above, or work it out from the alphabet — every letter page shows the cell and its dot numbers.
If your name has an accent, “in braille” has three answers
An accented letter is one cell in Spanish and Portuguese braille and three in Unified English Braille — a prefix, an accent mark, then the base letter. So the same name is a different length depending on which braille it is written in, and on a bracelet that is the difference between fitting and not.
It goes further than length. José is five cells in both Spanish and Portuguese, and they are not the same five: the é is dots 2-3-4-6 in Spanish and dots 1-2-3-4-5-6 in Portuguese. Neither code has a letter on the other's cell: the Spanish decoder here reads the Portuguese José back as Jos and names the last cell as left out, and the Portuguese decoder does the same with the Spanish.
| Name | English braille | Spanish braille | Portuguese braille |
|---|---|---|---|
| José | 7 | 5 | 5 |
| María | 8 | 6 | 6 |
| João | 7 | not in this code | 5 |
| Iñaki | 8 | 6 | 7 |
| Antônio | 10 | not in this code | 8 |
| Inés | 7 | 5 | 5 |
| Zoë | 6 | not in this code | 5 |
The answer is the code the person reading it uses, not the language the name came from. A Spanish name on a card for an English braille reader should be written in English braille: the Spanish é is the cell that reader knows as the word “the”, and the Spanish capital sign, dots 4-6, is not the English one. If you are not sure, write it in the reader's own code. Spanish and Portuguese have their own translators here, each checked against the reference implementation.
The tool at the top of this page writes English braille. It will tell you if a character has no English spelling rather than dropping it silently.
Questions and answers
How do I write my name in braille?
Type any name and it is shown as braille cells, with every letter broken down and the dot numbers written out.
Are names contracted in braille?
In a Grade 2 text, yes: a name is contracted like any other word, and the rulebook writes Thomas with the sign for th. This tool writes a name in Grade 1, letter by letter, so every letter of the name has a cell of its own.
What if my name has an accent?
The answer depends on which braille code the reader uses, not on the language the name came from. The accented letter is written differently in different codes.