Gaj’s Latin alphabet in Croatian (abeceda, latinica, or gajica) is the form of Latin script used for Croatian (Croatian, Bosnian, Serbian, and Montenegrin). It was devised by Croatian linguist Ljudevit Gaj in 1835, based on Jan Hus’s Czech alphabet. A slightly reduced version is used as the script of the Slovene language, and a modified version is used for the romanization of the Macedonian language. It was Pavao Ritter Vitezović who proposed an orthography solution for the Croatian language, according to which every sound should only have one letter. This idea inspired Croatian linguist Ljudevit Gaj, who reformed the Croatian variant of the Latin alphabet and introduced new letters based on the Czech alphabet. Today’s Croatian alphabet is used in Croatia, Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro. Many to this day think that it was originally Ljudevit Gaj’s idea.
The Croatian Latin was mostly designed by Ljudevit Gaj, who modelled it after the Czech and Polish languages, and invented ⟨lj⟩, ⟨nj⟩ and ⟨dž⟩. In 1830, he published the book “Kratka osnova horvatsko-slavenskog pravopisanja” (“Brief basics of the Croatian-Slavonic orthography”) in the Hungarian city of Bida – the first common Croatian orthography book. It was not the first ever Croatian orthography work, as it was preceded by works of Rajmund Đamanjić (1639), Ignjat Đurđević and Pavao Ritter Vitezović. Croats had previously used the Latin script, but some of the specific sounds were not uniformly represented. Versions of the Hungarian alphabet were most commonly used, but others were too, in an often confused, inconsistent fashion.
Gaj followed the example of Pavao Ritter Vitezović and the Czech orthography, designating one letter of the Latin script for each sound. Đuro Daničić suggested in his “Rječnik hrvatskoga ili srpskoga jezika” (“Dictionary of Croatian or Serbian language”), published in 1880, that Gaj’s digraphs ⟨dž⟩, ⟨dj⟩, ⟨lj⟩ and ⟨nj⟩ should be replaced by single letters : ⟨ģ⟩, ⟨đ⟩, ⟨ļ⟩ and ⟨ń⟩ respectively. The original Gaj alphabet was eventually revised, but only the digraph ⟨dj⟩ has been replaced with Daničić’s ⟨đ⟩, while ⟨dž⟩, ⟨lj⟩ and ⟨nj⟩ have been kept.
The English alphabet consists of 26 letters, while the Croatian has 30. However, four of the English letters are not found in the alphabet used by Croats: X, Y, W and Q. Therefore, the overall difference between those two alphabets amounts to eight letters, which should be taken into consideration while researching family history records.
The first unique characteristic of the Croatian alphabet is its diacritical letters Č, Ć, Š, Ž and Đ, which had been devised due to the presence of some distinguishable sounds in the pronunciation of certain words. It is important to note here that the Croatian alphabet is almost fully phonetic, meaning that each written letter represents a sound that typically doesn’t change depending on its position in a word or a sentence.
Another Croatian specific are digraphs or letters consisting of two signs that are treated as one, inseparable letter. Those letters are LJ, NJ and DŽ. Their inseparableness has had some interesting consequences on genealogy research. For example, when listed in alphabetical order, the surname Ljubić comes after Lovrić, and Njirić comes after Novak. So if you can’t find a surname in a certain list even though you think it should be there, take this explanation into account and you may have success.
Following is a table containing all the letters of the Croatian alphabet in their proper order, alongside their English alphabet parallels, as well as their pronunciation key and examples of surnames beginning with each letter.
| Croatian Alphabet | English Alphabet | Pronounci- ation | As in English word | Example of Croatian last name (surname) |
| A | A | car | Anić | |
| B | B | bat | Babić | |
| C | C | cats | Cindrić | |
| Č | – | chalk | Čavlović | |
| Ć | – | church | Ćurković | |
| D | D | dig | Delić | |
| DŽ | – | gin | Džajo | |
| Đ | – | jack | Đaković | |
| E | E | Erceg | ||
| F | F | fit | Filipović | |
| G | G | game | Grgić | |
| H | H | heaven | Hrvatin | |
| I | I | east | Ivanković | |
| J | J | year | Josipović | |
| K | K | cut | Kovač | |
| L | L | love | Leko | |
| LJ | – | million | Ljubić | |
| M | M | mice | Milas | |
| N | N | nice | Novačić | |
| NJ | – | onion | Njirić | |
| O | O | autmn | Oreški | |
| P | P | pick | Petrić | |
| – | Q | – | – | – |
| R | R | Fritz | Radić | |
| S | S | sound | Starčević | |
| Š | Š | shut | Šarlija | |
| T | T | time | Tkalec | |
| U | U | shoot | Udovičić | |
| V | V | verb | Vrbanić | |
| – | W | – | – | – |
| – | X | – | – | – |
| – | Y | – | – | – |
| Z | Z | zest | Zadravec | |
| Ž | – | pleasure | Žugec |
Learning the Croatian alphabet is very important because its structure is used in everyday conversations. Without it, you will not be able to pronounce words properly even if you know how to write them. The better you pronounce a letter in a word, the better fellow Croatian speakers will understand you.
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