Spanish Alphabet: Letter Names, Digraphs and the Tilde

Which characters in Spanish text are letters of the alphabet?

Fewer than Spanish text suggests. The Real Academia Española's summary of its 2010 Ortografía (opens in a new tab) lists the Spanish alphabet as a, b, c and on to z, with ñ after n. The grid above holds exactly those letters. They are also the index headings that Unicode CLDR gives Spanish.

CLDR's main set for Spanish goes further and adds á, é, í, ó, ú and ü. None of them is on the RAE's list, so this page keeps them in a row of their own. Each vowel has its page: a, e, i, o and u with an accent, and u with two dots.

The table sorts what you meet in Spanish text into letters and the rest. Each row is from the RAE summary or from FundéuRAE (opens in a new tab), the foundation the Academy advises.

Characters	What Spanish spelling counts them as	Who says so
ñ	a letter, filed after n	RAE list of letters
ch, ll	digraphs, two letters for one sound; letters until 2010	RAE, point 1
rr	a digraph the Academy never listed	FundéuRAE, 2010
q	a letter used only inside qu, before e or i, as in queso	RAE, point 3
k	a letter met mostly in loanwords: karaoke, kilo, koala	RAE, point 3
á é í ó ú	a vowel plus the tilde, the written accent	not in the RAE list
ü	u plus the diéresis	not in the RAE list
¿ ¡	opening marks of punctuation	FundéuRAE

The q row has a side effect for loanwords. The RAE wants a q that stands alone respelled once a word is adapted: quorum becomes cuórum, quasar becomes cuásar. For countries it prefers Catar and Irak to Qatar and Iraq.

The ñ is the one letter English lacks, and it has a page of its own: n with tilde tells the eñe story.

How do you type the Spanish letters on an English keyboard?

Spanish accents need only a few shortcuts, because CLDR's set for Spanish has one mark per vowel: the acute on á, é, í, ó and ú, two dots on ü, and the tilde of ñ. On a Mac, press Option+E and then the vowel. On Windows, hold Alt and type a code on the number pad. In Word, press Ctrl+' and then the vowel.

The table gives each character its documented method, from the same vendor help pages as the methods tables above.

Small	Capital	Mac	Windows, small / capital	Microsoft Word
á	Á	Option+E, then A	Alt+0225 / Alt+0193	Ctrl+', then A
é	É	Option+E, then E	Alt+0233 / Alt+0201	Ctrl+', then E
í	Í	Option+E, then I	Alt+0237 / Alt+0205	Ctrl+', then I
ó	Ó	Option+E, then O	Alt+0243 / Alt+0211	Ctrl+', then O
ú	Ú	Option+E, then U	Alt+0250 / Alt+0218	Ctrl+', then U
ü	Ü	Option+U, then U	Alt+0252 / Alt+0220	Ctrl+Shift+:, then U
ñ	Ñ	Option+N, then N	Alt+0241 / Alt+0209	Ctrl+Shift+~, then N

For a capital on a Mac or in Word, hold Shift on the second key: Option+E, then Shift+A, gives Á. The Windows codes work only with the digits of the number pad and Num Lock on. On a phone, touch and hold the plain vowel, or N, and slide to the marked letter.

What is each letter of the Spanish alphabet called?

Every letter of the Spanish alphabet has one name the RAE recommends, set out in point 2 of the same summary. The aim is to bring the Spanish-speaking countries towards one set of names. The summary also says the other names in use are not wrong, and it lists them. A few old names it does reject outright.

Letter	Recommended name	Other names still valid	Rejected names
a	a
b	be	be larga, be grande, be alta
c	ce
d	de
e	e
f	efe
g	ge
h	hache
i	i	i latina
j	jota
k	ka
l	ele
m	eme
n	ene
ñ	eñe
o	o
p	pe
q	cu
r	erre		ere
s	ese
t	te
u	u
v	uve	ve, ve corta, ve chica, ve chiquita, ve pequeña, ve baja
w	uve doble	ve doble, doble uve, doble ve, doble u
x	equis
y	ye	i griega
z	zeta		ceta, ceda, zeda

Why uve? B and v sound exactly alike in Spanish, so a speaker who says ve usually adds corta, chica or baja to be understood. Uve needs no help. The pairs go together: where v is ve corta, b is be larga.

Why ye? It follows the pattern of most consonants, the letter plus e, as in be, ce and de. It was coined in the second half of the 19th century. I griega is older, from Latin, and still the most widespread. Uve doble wins over doble u, which the RAE calls a copy of the English double u.

The digraphs keep names of their own. FundéuRAE gives che for ch and elle for ll, though neither is a letter any more.

Do ch and ll still sort as Spanish letters of their own?

No, and not since 1994. The RAE summary says the Association of Academies of the Spanish Language chose the universal Latin order at its tenth congress that year. Words with ch are filed under c, and words with ll under l. The 2010 Ortografía only took the last step and dropped them from the Spanish alphabet.

Software keeps both orders. The CLDR rules for Spanish (opens in a new tab) have a standard order with one rule, ñ after n. A second, traditional order adds ch after c and ll after l. We sorted the same words with each on 2026-10-13, using Intl.Collator in Node.js v26.0.0 (ICU 78.3, CLDR 48.0). The locale tags were es and es-u-co-trad.

Place	Standard Spanish order	Traditional order
1	calle	calle
2	callo	callo
3	cama	cama
4	chico	cielo
5	cielo	cuna
6	cuna	chico
7	dama	dama
8	llama	lugar
9	lugar	luz
10	luz	llama
11	mano	mano

In the traditional order chico waits until every other c word is done, and llama comes after luz. Calle stays before cama in both, because ll, even as a letter of its own, comes before m. If a Spanish list puts chico after cuna, the program used the old order.

When does a Spanish word take a written accent, and when does it lose it?

Spanish accents follow the stress, so the mark can appear and vanish inside one word family. The rules are general ones, and the RAE summary applies them while it explains its changes.

A word stressed on its last syllable takes the tilde when it ends in n, s or a vowel. A word stressed on the next-to-last syllable takes none when it ends in a vowel, n or s. A word of one syllable never takes one, unless the tilde tells two words apart.

Word	Where the stress is	Ending	Tilde?	Source
acné	last syllable	vowel	yes	RAE, point 3
aquel	last syllable	l	no	RAE, point 5
joven	next-to-last	n	no	FundéuRAE, 2023
búnker	next-to-last	r	yes	RAE, point 3
jóvenes	third from last	s	yes	FundéuRAE, 2023
guion	one syllable, by convention	n	no	RAE, point 4

The plural is where most people trip. FundéuRAE (opens in a new tab) lists imagen, examen, resumen, origen, joven, orden and margen. Each is written without a mark in the singular. Add -es and the stress lands third from the end, so imágenes, exámenes, jóvenes and órdenes all need one. FundéuRAE quotes news copy with imágen and órden, both wrong.

Pronouns tacked onto a verb do the same. FundéuRAE's note on these verbs (opens in a new tab) gives dímelo, entiéndelo and duérmete, which gain a mark. Dé loses its mark in dele and deme, because those are no longer words of one syllable.

Capitals follow the same rules. FundéuRAE (opens in a new tab) calls the idea that capital letters go without the tilde wrong.

Every rule in order, with a check to run on any word and the reason each common word carries its mark, is on the Spanish accents page.

Which written accents did the 2010 Ortografía take away?

Spanish accent marks left a short list of words in 2010. The RAE summary names them and gives the rule behind each change, so a text written before then can be brought up to date row by row.

Written before	Written now	What the RAE summary says
guión, truhán	guion, truhan	point 4: one syllable for spelling, so no mark
crió, guió, huí	crio, guio, hui	point 4: the same rule, in verb forms
sólo, éste, aquél	solo, este, aquel	point 5: no mark, even where a sentence could be read two ways
3 ó 4	3 o 4	point 6: the word o is never marked, even between figures

The first two rows have a history. A convention of 1999 already counted these words as one syllable, but let speakers who heard two syllables keep the mark. The 2010 edition withdrew that choice, and the summary adds that the rule is for spelling only: nobody has to change how they say the word. Point 4 lists the words it covers, among them guion, ion, truhan and the verb forms of criar, fiar, guiar, huir, liar and reír.

The third row got a gloss later. A note from the RAE of March 2023 (opens in a new tab) keeps the adverb solo and the pronouns este, ese and aquel without a mark as the rule. The mark is optional only where, in the writer's judgment, a sentence could be misread.

The o row had a practical reason. The old mark kept o from being read as a zero. The RAE judged that the spaces around the word and its smaller shape do that job: 1 o 2 against 102.

One change went the other way. An adapted loanword now follows the accent rules like any Spanish word. So quorum, written in italics as a Latin word, becomes cuórum, with a tilde, once it is respelled.

How do the opening ¿ and ¡ work in Spanish?

A Spanish question opens with ¿ and closes with ?, and an exclamation opens with ¡. They are punctuation, not letters of the Spanish alphabet, so they are not in the grid. A device sold in Spain to write text must offer them, along with ñ, under Real Decreto 564/1993 (opens in a new tab).

When a sentence asks and exclaims at once, the marks can be mixed. FundéuRAE (opens in a new tab), citing the Ortografía, allows two ways. One opens with one sign and closes with the other: ¡Cómo te has atrevido a hacer eso? The other doubles both: ¿¡Qué estás diciendo!?

The pair can also be left out, but only in narrow cases. A FundéuRAE answer of 2025 (opens in a new tab) names two: the title of a work, or of part of a text, set as a statement of its own, and a rhetorical question that makes a claim.