Fern

The third letter of ogham, three strokes to the right of the stem line. Its name, fern, means alder; on the stones it stands for a v sound, which became f in Old Irish.

Ogham. Also called alder ogham, fearn, ogham alder, ogham F, ogham V, ᚃ.

Meaning

Fern is the third letter of the B group, three strokes to the right of the line. Its name is the alder, and here the medieval Auraicept was right: Damian McManus, in the summary of the Ogham in 3D project at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, gives “alder-tree”, and Deborah Hayden and David Stifter of the OG(H)AM project list fern among the names that really are trees. The sound changed. On the stones the letter is v, but by the Old Irish period that sound had become f, “hence Fern with f in the manuscript tradition”. Unicode encodes it as U+1683 OGHAM LETTER FEARN, the modern Irish spelling.

Origin and history

The Auraicept na nÉces gives the alder a soldier’s kenning: “the van of the warrior-bands, that is, alder, for thereof are the shields”. In Lebor Ogaim has the same riddle from the Word Ogham of Morann, “shield of warrior-bands”, and a domestic one from the Word Ogham of Mac ind Óc, “guarding of milk”, because the vessels that hold milk were made of alder.

V on the stones

The formula word AVI, “grandson, remote descendant”, which names a person’s kin, is spelled with this letter, and so is VELITAS, “poet”, on a stone at Crag in County Kerry, as the Heritage Council’s guide records.

Right or left of the edge

The side of the edge is everything. At Monataggart in County Cork the carver confused the B and H groups, the OG(H)AM project found, and cut T for V: three strokes on the left of the edge are Tinne, three on the right are fern.

Write in ogham

stringmash.comOgham translatorWrite English in ogham, the early Irish alphabet of strokes cut along an edge, with the full ogham chart.

Sources

Ogham in 3D: alphabet, Ogham in 3D (2013 edition), letter names after Damian McManus, A Guide to Ogam (1991) and Ériu 39 (1988), Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, alphabet; Letter names, Aicme Beithe
Auraicept na n-éces: the scholars' primer, George Calder (ed. and trans.), 1917: the Ogham tract from the Book of Ballymote and the Yellow Book of Lecan, with In Lebor Ogaim, John Grant, Edinburgh (Internet Archive), Auraicept, p. 91; In Lebor Ogaim, pp. 277, 285
Ogam and trees, Deborah Hayden and David Stifter, 20 December 2022, OG(H)AM project, University of Glasgow and Maynooth University, §1, Fern
Ogham Stones in Ireland, Nora White, Our Ancient Landscapes: Ogham Stones in Ireland (2021), The Heritage Council, p. 10, Ogham alphabet and letter names; p. 12, Contents of ogham inscriptions
Og(h)am of the Month, OG(H)AM project team (Nora White, Patricia O’Connor, David Stifter and others), 2021–2025, OG(H)AM project, University of Glasgow and Maynooth University, March 2025: Monataggart
Ogham (Unicode code chart U+1680–U+169F), The Unicode Standard, code chart for the Ogham block, Unicode Consortium, U+1683

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Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research

Added October 9, 2026.

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