Old English Numbers Converter

What Are Old English Numbers?

Old English numbers are the number-words used in Anglo-Saxon England from around the 5th century until the Norman Conquest in 1066. Like the rest of Old English vocabulary, they descend from Proto-Germanic roots, which is why several of them still resemble their modern German and Dutch counterparts — fēower (four) sits close to German vier, and seofon (seven) mirrors German sieben.

Unlike Modern English, Old English numerals were also inflected: the words for "one," "two," "three," and "four" changed form depending on grammatical gender and case, much like adjectives did. Numbers above four generally did not decline this way, which is part of why 1–4 are the most linguistically complex numerals to reconstruct accurately.

The Core Numeral Set (1–20)

The foundation of the system is a set of individual words for one through twenty, similar in structure to Modern English:

• 1 – ān
• 2 – twā
• 3 – þrēo
• 4 – fēower
• 5 – fīf
• 6 – siex
• 7 – seofon
• 8 – eahta
• 9 – nigon
• 10 – tīen
• 11 – endleofan
• 12 – twelf
• 13–19 – formed with -tīene (e.g., þrēotīene, "thirteen")
• 20 – twentig

Notice that 11 and 12 don't follow the "ten-plus" pattern used from 13 onward. This isn't unique to Old English — Modern English still does the same thing with "eleven" and "twelve," both of which come directly from these Old English forms rather than from "one-teen" or "two-teen."

Why "One-and-Twenty" Instead of "Twenty-One"

This is the detail that surprises most people learning the system for the first time. Old English built numbers above twenty by stating the smaller unit before the ten, joined with "and":

• 21 – ān and twentig ("one-and-twenty")
• 24 – fēower and twentig ("four-and-twenty")
• 32 – twā and þrītig ("two-and-thirty")

This unit-before-ten pattern is exactly the same construction preserved in the well-known nursery rhyme line "four-and-twenty blackbirds baked in a pie," which dates from a period when this older numeral order was still common in spoken English, well after the Old English period itself had ended. German still uses this pattern today (einundzwanzig — "one-and-twenty" — for 21), which is a useful comparison point if you're already familiar with German numbers.

Hundreds and Thousands

Larger numbers were built in a similar additive style:

• 100 – hund (or hundred)
• 200 – tū hund ("two hundred")
• 1,000 – þūsend

For a number like 124, the construction adds the remainder after the hundred using ond ("and"): hund ond fēower and twentig — literally "hundred and four-and-twenty."

Was There a Zero?

Not in the way modern arithmetic uses one. Old English didn't have a dedicated numeral for "zero" as a placeholder digit, since positional decimal notation hadn't reached England yet. The closest equivalent concept was expressed with words meaning "none" or "not any," such as nān, rather than a numeral in a counting sequence.

How to Convert a Number Into Old English

Manually reconstructing an Old English number means applying the pattern above in order:

1. Break the number into thousands, hundreds, tens, and units.
2. Convert each unit using the tables and rules.
3. For any number ending in a non-zero unit above 20, place the unit before the ten, joined by "and".
4. Join hundreds and thousands to the remainder with "ond".

This is straightforward for small numbers but gets easy to get wrong once you're combining hundreds, thousands, and units-before-tens in the same phrase — which is where a dedicated converter is faster and more consistent than working it out by hand.

Numeral Ledger

A reference checklist for common numbers in Anglo-Saxon Old English:

Frequently Asked Questions