French spelling alphabet
Spell any name or code the French way over the phone: PARIS becomes Pierre Anatole Raoul Irma Suzanne, using the classic table from Anatole for A to Zoé for Z, and those code words decode back into letters. Free in your browser.
- Free
- Runs in your browser
- No sign-up
- Your data stays on your device
Run — free
Worked example
- Text
- PARIS
- Result
- Pierre Anatole Raoul Irma Suzanne
- Calculation mode
- Encode
- Quantity
- 5
- Alphabet
- french_spelling
The classic French spelling alphabet—also called the French radiotelephony or téléphone spelling alphabet—maps every Latin letter to a familiar French given name so names, serial numbers, and short identifiers stay clear over noisy phone and radio links. Anatole for A, Berthe for B, Célestin for C, and the rest of the table remain everyday practice in French-speaking administrations, schools, and help desks when a single misheard letter would waste time or create risk. This capability spells plain text into those code words or decodes a sequence of French spelling words back into letters, with a simple mode switch and a hard error when a code word is unknown.
Spell text with French code words (encode mode)
Each Latin letter A through Z maps to its classic French code word—Anatole for A, Berthe for B, Célestin for C, Désiré for D, Eugène for E, François for F, Gaston, Henri, Irma, Joseph, Kléber, Louis, Marcel, Nicolas, Oscar, Pierre, Quintal, Raoul, Suzanne, Thérèse, Ursule, Victor, William, Xavier, Yvonne, and Zoé for Z—using the traditional spellings with accents where the names carry them. Accented input letters are normalized before lookup so É and E both encode as Eugène.
Whitespace in the input separates word groups: letters inside a group are joined with single spaces, and groups are joined with a slash surrounded by spaces so Hi there becomes Henri Irma slash Thérèse Henri Eugène Raoul Eugène. Empty text with no letters also fails validation. Identical inputs always produce identical outputs because the path is pure table lookup with no network, no random salt, and no wall clock.
Use encode whenever you need a paste-ready French radio spelling for a ticket number, airport code fragment, license plate, or short recovery phrase that must be read aloud without ambiguity in a French-speaking channel.
Decode French spelling words and reject unknown code words
Set mode to decode and put a sequence of French spelling alphabet code words in text, separated by spaces. Optional slash markers between groups are ignored so you can round-trip the encode output without stripping separators by hand. Matching is case-insensitive and treats hyphens, underscores, apostrophes, and internal spaces as equivalent after accent stripping, so Célestin, Celestin, and célestin all decode to C.
Canonical letter words resolve to uppercase letters; accent-stripped forms of Désiré, Eugène, François, Kléber, Thérèse, and Zoé are accepted so real-world pastes without diacritics still work. Empty decode input fails the same way. Prefer this capability when search intent is French spelling alphabet, alphabet téléphonique français, Anatole Berthe Célestin converter, or French phonetic spell and decode for short identifiers; NATO Alpha Bravo Charlie belongs to the separate NATO phonetic tool, not this French table.
How to use it day to day, and its limits
Call the free in-browser French spelling alphabet tool for help-desk scripts, language-class drills, amateur radio practice in French, classroom demos, and one-off identifier checks without installing a spreadsheet of code words. A typical workflow encodes a short booking reference for an agent to read over the phone in French, pastes the spoken words into a ticket, then decodes on the receiving system and asserts that result matches the original letters.
Another workflow decodes student answers in a training quiz and fails loud on unknown code words so instructors see the exact typo. Authors shipping SDKs can map the tokens array into a table of character and code columns for UI copy buttons, while mode and alphabet labels make OpenAPI examples self-explanatory for readers comparing radio spelling styles across languages.
What you can do with it
French help desk and phone verification
Agents spell booking codes and serial numbers as Anatole Berthe Célestin over the phone, then decode the customer’s read-back to catch misheard letters before closing the ticket.
Classroom and radio drills in French
Instructors encode short identifiers for practice sheets and auto-grade student decode answers, failing loud on unknown code words instead of accepting silent typos.
FAQ
How do I spell text with the French spelling alphabet?
The result field returns Pierre Anatole Raoul Irma Suzanne with a tokens list for each character.
How do I decode Anatole Berthe Célestin back to letters?
Set mode to decode and put space-separated French code words in text. The result field returns the recovered uppercase letters.
How is this different from the NATO phonetic alphabet?
This tool uses the classic French names (Anatole, Berthe, Célestin). NATO/ICAO uses Alpha, Bravo, Charlie and is a separate capability with a different search intent.
How are accented letters like É spelled?
Accents are removed before the lookup, so É and E are both spelled Eugène, and Ç becomes Célestin. That keeps the read-back to the twenty-six classic French code words.
Do I have to type the accents when decoding French code words?
No. Matching ignores case and accents, so Célestin, Celestin and célestin all give C, and unaccented forms of Désiré, Eugène, François, Kléber, Thérèse and Zoé are accepted as well.
Related tools
For developers — API access
Everything on this page is available programmatically. This section is for teams who want to wire it into their own systems; everyone else can just use the tool above.
API endpoint
Prefer to automate it? One authenticated POST creates the task; the result comes back by webhook or a signed link. The same capability also runs here on the web, by email and from Telegram — and soon from our app too.
Call it from your stack
curl -X POST https://api.kit.forhosting.com/enc/french-spelling \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $KIT_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"text":"PARIS"}'const res = await fetch("https://api.kit.forhosting.com/enc/french-spelling", {
method: "POST",
headers: {
"Authorization": `Bearer ${process.env.KIT_KEY}`,
"Content-Type": "application/json"
},
body: JSON.stringify({
"text": "PARIS"
})
});
const { task_id } = await res.json();import os, requests
res = requests.post(
"https://api.kit.forhosting.com/enc/french-spelling",
headers={"Authorization": f"Bearer {os.environ['KIT_KEY']}"},
json={
"text": "PARIS"
},
)
task_id = res.json()["task_id"]<?php
$res = file_get_contents("https://api.kit.forhosting.com/enc/french-spelling", false, stream_context_create([
"http" => [
"method" => "POST",
"header" => "Authorization: Bearer " . getenv("KIT_KEY") . "\r\nContent-Type: application/json",
"content" => '{"text":"PARIS"}',
],
]));
$task = json_decode($res, true);body := bytes.NewBufferString(`{"text":"PARIS"}`)
req, _ := http.NewRequest("POST", "https://api.kit.forhosting.com/enc/french-spelling", body)
req.Header.Set("Authorization", "Bearer "+os.Getenv("KIT_KEY"))
req.Header.Set("Content-Type", "application/json")
res, _ := http.DefaultClient.Do(req)Example request
{
"text": "PARIS"
}Example response
{
"task_id": "tsk_a1b2c3d4e5f6a1b2c3d4e5f6",
"type": "enc.french_spelling",
"status": "queued",
"_links": {
"result": "/tasks/tsk_…/result"
}
}The API is asynchronous: the call returns a task_id immediately and the result arrives by webhook. Polling is capped at 1 req/s per task.
Pricing
Published price — no tokens, no invented credits. A failed task is never charged.
Errors
| HTTP | Code | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
401 | unauthorized | Missing or invalid API key. |
402 | insufficient_balance | Your balance doesn't cover the task price. |
404 | unknown_type | That task type doesn't exist. |
429 | rate_limited | Too many requests. Use the webhook instead of polling. |
Technical notes
The algorithm is a fixed deterministic table: no model, no network, and no clock, so the same input always yields the same JSON for tests and SDKs.
Spell text with French code words (encode mode)
Send a JSON body with the required string field text set to the letters you want to spell, and leave mode at its default encode or set mode to encode explicitly. Characters outside letters and whitespace raise invalid_input with the offending character and index, so punctuation does not silently drop out of a call-sign check. Aliases input, value, and s are accepted for the text field; direction, op, and action may stand in for mode. The response includes result as the spelled phrase, tokens as an array of char and code pairs, count as the number of mapped characters, mode equal to encode, and alphabet equal to french_spelling.
Decode French spelling words and reject unknown code words
Any token that is not a known code word raises invalid_input with an explicit unknown code word message naming the bad token—exactly the contract radio-check and training tools need when a typo would otherwise invent a wrong letter. On success the response returns result as the recovered string, tokens pairing each resolved character with its canonical code word, count, mode decode, and alphabet french_spelling. Validation failures are not charged on the prepaid API, so operators can probe bad pastes safely.
API usage, pricing, workflows, and practical limits
Use the prepaid KIT API when a support backend, onboarding bot, logistics label printer, or SDK needs the same encode or decode step under balance at $0.002 per successful item; failed validation never consumes balance after the engine rejects the request. Pair this endpoint with NATO phonetic spelling only when you deliberately switch alphabets for an international desk; keep the steps as separate landings so each page matches a single search intent.
Integration use cases
CI fixtures for French identifier pipelines
Services that generate spoken French spellings pin encode and decode goldens—including an unknown-word error—so table drift is caught in continuous integration.
Technical questions
What happens on an unknown code word?
Decode raises invalid_input naming the unknown code word. Validation failures are not charged on the prepaid API.
Is the French spelling alphabet tool free?
The browser widget runs free on your device. API calls use prepaid KIT balance at $0.002 per successful item.