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Copy and paste Old English blackletter letters in 5 styles, rewrite modern English as Shakespearean thee and thou with properly conjugated verbs, or translate archaic English back to modern.
Want more blackletter? Try the Gothic Font Generator or the Runic Text Generator, or browse all Text tools.
Last updated: October 5, 2026 · Published: 2026-04-09 · Updated: 2026-10-05
14 characters
Old English bold
𝖄𝖊 𝕺𝖑𝖉𝖊 𝕿𝖆𝖛𝖊𝖗𝖓
These letters are Unicode symbols, so they paste into bios, posts and names without installing a font. Screen readers may spell them out, so keep important text plain.
All 5 Old English styles
Old English text usually means one of two things. The first is the Old English font: heavy, angular blackletter letters like those on diplomas, newspaper mastheads and tattoos. The second is old-sounding English with thou, thee and verbs like hath and art, the way Shakespeare and the King James Bible were written.
Neither is the real Old English language. Old English, or Anglo-Saxon, was spoken in England from about 450 to 1150, was written in rounded Insular script, and is hard to read today without study. The blackletter look comes from later medieval and early printed books, and thee and thou come from Early Modern English, about 1500 to 1700. This generator does all three: the lettering, the Shakespearean grammar, and real Old English words.
Pick what you want
Choose Old English font for blackletter letters, Thee and thou to write like Shakespeare, or Back to modern to translate archaic English.
Type or paste your text
The result updates as you type. For lettering, every one of the 5 styles is shown at once. For Shakespearean English, each change is listed so you can see what was rewritten.
Copy it
Copy the result, copy one style, or copy every style as a numbered list. Paste it anywhere that accepts text.
Each style below shows Ye Olde Tavern, made by the generator. The letters come from Unicode's Mathematical Fraktur and Bold Fraktur sets, added in Unicode 3.1 in 2001, so they work as text without installing a font.
| Style | Example | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Old English bold | 𝖄𝖊 𝕺𝖑𝖉𝖊 𝕿𝖆𝖛𝖊𝖗𝖓 | Bold blackletter, the closest Unicode match to the Old English Text font. |
| Old English | 𝔜𝔢 𝔒𝔩𝔡𝔢 𝔗𝔞𝔳𝔢𝔯𝔫 | Lighter blackletter letters from Unicode's Mathematical Fraktur set. |
| Blackletter initials | 𝖄𝔢 𝕺𝔩𝔡𝔢 𝕿𝔞𝔳𝔢𝔯𝔫 | A bold capital on each word with lighter letters after it, like a title page. |
| Ye Olde sign | 𝖄𝖊 𝕺𝖑𝖉𝖊 𝕿𝖆𝖛𝖊𝖗𝖓𝖊 | The becomes Ye and old becomes olde, set in bold blackletter for signs and labels. |
| Thorn spelling | Ye Olde Tavern | Th written as þ and ae as æ, the letters English used before printing. |
| Typed | Old English bold | Old English |
|---|---|---|
| Martinez | 𝕸𝖆𝖗𝖙𝖎𝖓𝖊𝖟 | 𝔐𝔞𝔯𝔱𝔦𝔫𝔢𝔷 |
| Est. 1998 | 𝕰𝖘𝖙. 1998 | 𝔈𝔰𝔱. 1998 |
| Happy Birthday | 𝕳𝖆𝖕𝖕𝖞 𝕭𝖎𝖗𝖙𝖍𝖉𝖆𝖞 | ℌ𝔞𝔭𝔭𝔶 𝔅𝔦𝔯𝔱𝔥𝔡𝔞𝔶 |
The font called Old English, or Old English Text MT, is a blackletter typeface from Monotype that comes with Microsoft Office. Microsoft’s font notes say little is known about its history and that it closely resembles Cloister Black, designed by Morris Fuller Benton in 1904. Both follow the English blackletter tradition usually traced to Caslon Black, cut around 1760.
Unicode leaves a few gaps in its plain Fraktur set because the letters already existed: the capitals C, H, I, R and Z come from Letterlike Symbols as ℭ ℌ ℑ ℜ ℨ. The generator fills these gaps for you. Accented letters and numbers have no blackletter form and stay as they are.
Pasting blackletter into Back to modern turns it into plain letters again, so 𝕺𝖑𝖉 𝕰𝖓𝖌𝖑𝖎𝖘𝖍 becomes Old English.
The translator follows Early Modern English grammar rather than swapping words at random. It picks thou or thee by position, uses thine before a vowel, inverts questions (Dost thou know?), and adds -est after thou and -eth after he, she or a name. These examples are the generator’s own output.
| Modern English | Shakespearean English |
|---|---|
| Do you know where my friend is? | Dost thou know where my friend is? |
| You are late, and your horse is tired. | Thou art late, and thy horse is tired. |
| I think it is going to rain tomorrow. | Methinks 'tis going to rain on the morrow. |
| Please listen to me, she loves you. | Prithee hark to me, she loveth thee. |
| Why are you here? Thank you for coming. | Wherefore art thou here? I thank thee for coming. |
| Hello! Will you marry me? | Good morrow! Wilt thou marry me? |
Thou was the singular, familiar you, used for family, friends, lovers, children and servants, and for God in prayer. You was plural and also the polite form for a stranger or superior. By around 1700 thou had largely dropped out of standard English, though it survives in some northern English dialects.
| Use | One person (familiar) | Plural or formal | Today | Example |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Subject | thou | ye | you | Thou art kind. |
| Object | thee | you | you | I thank thee. |
| Possessive before a consonant | thy | your | your | Thy name. |
| Possessive before a vowel | thine | your | your | Thine eyes. |
| Possessive on its own | thine | yours | yours | The choice is thine. |
| Reflexive | thyself | yourselves | yourself | Know thyself. |
| Verb | With thou | With he, she, it | Modern (you / he) |
|---|---|---|---|
| to be | thou art | he is | are / is |
| to have | thou hast | he hath | have / has |
| to do | thou dost | he doth | do / does |
| to will | thou wilt | he will | will / will |
| to can | thou canst | he can | can / can |
| to know | thou knowest | he knoweth | know / knows |
| to love | thou lovest | he loveth | love / loves |
| to go | thou goest | he goeth | go / goes |
| to say | thou sayest | he saith | say / says |
| to run | thou runnest | he runneth | run / runs |
Common words from Shakespeare’s English, with lines where you may have met them. The translator uses these in both directions.
| Word | Meaning | Where you hear it |
|---|---|---|
| wherefore | why | O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? (Romeo and Juliet) |
| 'tis | it is | 'Tis but thy name that is my enemy. (Romeo and Juliet) |
| methinks | I think, it seems to me | The lady doth protest too much, methinks. (Hamlet) |
| perchance | perhaps | To sleep, perchance to dream. (Hamlet) |
| thee | you, as an object | Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? (Sonnet 18) |
| hark | listen | Hark, hark! the lark at heaven's gate sings. (Cymbeline) |
| prithee | please, from I pray thee | A polite request, as in prithee, wait. |
| anon | soon, at once | Often shouted by servants: Anon, anon! |
| ere | before | Ere long means before long. |
| forsooth | in truth, indeed | Now mostly used jokingly to sound old-fashioned. |
| naught | nothing | Still heard in come to naught. |
| good morrow | good morning | Morrow means morning or the next day, as in tomorrow. |
| gramercy | thank you | From Old French grant merci, great thanks. |
| aye and nay | yes and no | Aye is still used for votes in the UK Parliament. |
| Archaic | Modern, from Back to modern |
|---|---|
| Wherefore art thou Romeo? | Why are you Romeo? |
| Methinks thou dost protest too much. | I think you do protest too much. |
| He that loveth not knoweth not God. | He that loves not knows not God. |
| Prithee, tarry not, for the hour draweth nigh. | Please, tarry not, for the hour draws near. |
English is usually split into these periods. The dates are approximate, since languages change gradually.
| Period | Dates | Sample | What it says |
|---|---|---|---|
| Old English (Anglo-Saxon) | c. 450 to 1150 | Hwæt! We Gardena in geardagum | Listen! We have heard of the Spear-Danes in days of old. The opening of Beowulf. |
| Middle English | c. 1150 to 1500 | Whan that Aprille with his shoures soote | When April with its sweet showers. The opening of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. |
| Early Modern English | c. 1500 to 1700 | O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? | Romeo, why are you Romeo? Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet. |
| Modern English | c. 1700 to today | Why are you Romeo? | Thou and -eth have dropped out of everyday standard English. |
The opening of the Lord’s Prayer shows the change. Notice art, the thou form of are, surviving from Old English eart to 1611.
| Version | Text |
|---|---|
| Old English (West Saxon gospels) | Fæder ūre, þū þe eart on heofonum |
| Middle English (Wycliffe Bible, 1380s) | Oure fadir that art in heuenes |
| Early Modern English (King James Bible, 1611) | Our Father which art in heaven |
| Modern English | Our Father in heaven |
Old English used the Latin alphabet plus a few extra letters. The Thorn spelling style puts þ and æ back into your text.
| Letter | Name | Sound | What happened to it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Æ æ | Ash | a as in cat | Dropped by Middle English; now written ae or a. |
| Þ þ | Thorn | th as in thin or this | Lasted into early printing, where y stood in for it, giving ye for the. |
| Ð ð | Eth | th, used alongside thorn | Gave way to thorn and then th. Icelandic still uses both. |
| Ƿ ƿ | Wynn | w | Borrowed from runes and replaced by w after the Norman Conquest. |
| Ȝ ȝ | Yogh | y or a throaty gh | A Middle English letter, replaced by y and gh, as in night. |
| ſ | Long s | s | Used inside words in print until about 1800, then replaced by s. |
The generator shows these when your text contains the modern word. A line over a vowel marks it as long. 32 words are included.
| Modern | Old English | Note |
|---|---|---|
| hello | wes hāl | Be well; the source of wassail |
| king | cyning | |
| queen | cwēn | |
| lord | hlāford | From hlāf-weard, loaf-guardian |
| lady | hlǣfdige | Loaf-kneader |
| friend | frēond | |
| man | mann | Meant person; a male was wer |
| woman | wīfmann | |
| child | cild | |
| father | fæder | |
| mother | mōdor | |
| brother | brōþor | |
| house | hūs | |
| home | hām | |
| day | dæg | |
| night | niht | |
| sun | sunne | |
| moon | mōna | |
| earth | eorþe | |
| heaven | heofon | |
| water | wæter | |
| bread | hlāf | |
| sword | sweord | |
| ship | scip | |
| dragon | draca | |
| people | folc | |
| book | bōc | |
| stone | stān | |
| holy | hālig | |
| good | gōd | |
| life | līf | |
| death | dēaþ |
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