NATO Phonetic Alphabet

Why spell with code words at all

Over a phone line or a radio, many letters collapse into the same sound. B, D, E, G, P, T and V all end in "ee"; M and N are easy to confuse, and so are F and S. A booking reference like BDP3TV read letter by letter is a guessing game. Replacing each letter with a distinct word fixes that: nobody mishears "Bravo Delta Papa" as anything else. The list in use today grew out of ICAO work in the late 1940s, which required words that worked in English, French and Spanish, and took its final form in 1956 after tests with speakers from 31 countries.

The 26 code words, in the spellings this tool uses:

A Alfa · B Bravo · C Charlie · D Delta · E Echo · F Foxtrot · G Golf · H Hotel · I India · J Juliett · K Kilo · L Lima · M Mike · N November · O Oscar · P Papa · Q Quebec · R Romeo · S Sierra · T Tango · U Uniform · V Victor · W Whiskey · X X-ray · Y Yankee · Z Zulu

Digits come out as Zero, One, Two … Nine. When saying them on the radio, aviation practice uses the ICAO pronunciations, the best known being TREE for 3, FIFE for 5 and NIN-er for 9.

Exactly what the converter does

• Letters A–Z become their code word. Upper and lower case give the same word, so the output does not tell the listener which letters were capitals. Say "capital" or "lowercase" yourself if it matters, as it does for passwords.
• Digits 0–9 become Zero to Nine.
• Each space becomes a /, so word breaks stay visible. Two spaces in a row give two slashes.
• Anything else (punctuation, symbols, accented letters such as é, other alphabets, emoji) is copied through unchanged as its own word.
• Every output item is separated by a single space. Line breaks in your input are kept, in the preview and in the copied text.

Worked examples

These are the tool's actual outputs:

• Hello 42 → Hotel Echo Lima Lima Oscar / Four Two
• K7Q-2X9 → Kilo Seven Quebec - Two X-ray Nine
• j.doe@mail.com → Juliett . Delta Oscar Echo @ Mike Alfa India Lima . Charlie Oscar Mike

The last one shows how the output is meant to be read: the . and @ are left in place for you to say "dot" and "at". The second one has a hyphen and an X; note that the code word X-ray contains a hyphen of its own, while the standalone - surrounded by spaces is the character from your input.

What it does not do

• It does not decode code words back into text.
• It does not add pronunciation guides or the ITU maritime digit words (Nadazero, Unaone and so on).
• It does not spell out punctuation as words, so 121.5 becomes One Two One . Five and you decide whether to say "decimal" (the ICAO convention) or "point".
• It has no audio. To hear a message, use the Text to Speech tool, or the Morse Code Translator to play it as Morse.

For the history, the official pronunciation of every code word and the rules for saying numbers on the radio, read Why the NATO alphabet spells it Alfa and Juliett (and says Niner).

Frequently asked questions

Is it Alfa or Alpha, Juliett or Juliet?

The official spellings are Alfa and Juliett, and that is what this tool outputs. ICAO explains that "ph" may not be read as an f sound by speakers of some languages, and that French speakers may treat a single final t as silent. Over the radio, Alpha and Juliet are understood just the same; the official spelling matters most in written material.

Why does the tool write Nine instead of Niner?

Because Niner is how the digit is said, not how it is written. ICAO's respellings such as NIN-er, TREE and FIFE describe how to say the digit, not how to write it. The tool prints Zero to Nine and leaves the pronunciation to you; the post linked below has the full pronunciation table.

Is the NATO alphabet the same as the ICAO or international radiotelephony alphabet?

Yes. The same 26 code words are published by ICAO for aviation and by the ITU for maritime and other radio services, and NATO adopted them in 1956. "NATO phonetic alphabet" is the popular name; the formal name is the radiotelephony spelling alphabet.

How do I spell an email address with it?

Spell the letters and digits with code words and say the punctuation as plain words: "at" for @, "dot" for a full stop, "dash" or "hyphen" for -, "underscore" for _. The tool leaves those symbols in place in its output so you can see where to say them.

Can it translate NATO words back into letters?

No. This tool only goes from text to code words. Typing "Alfa Bravo" spells each letter of those words again, producing Alfa Lima Foxtrot Alfa / Bravo Romeo Alfa Victor Oscar.

Is the text I type sent anywhere?

No. The conversion is a 36-entry lookup table in the page itself, so booking references, account numbers and names stay on your device. It keeps working without a connection once the page has loaded.