Greek Alphabetical Sort

Sort Greek words with accented letters collated to base letter

Sorts Greek words using locale-aware CLDR collation, where accented vowels like ά and ϊ collate next to their base letter instead of after omega. Paste a list and sort instantly.

Why not just sort Greek words with a plain code-point sort?

A naive code-point sort puts accented letters like ά after the unaccented alphabet, because their Unicode values are higher. Greek dictionary order treats ά as a variant of α, so it must sort right next to α.

Sorting Greek text correctly is harder than it looks. A plain Unicode code-point sort pushes accented vowels such as ά and ϊ to the end of the list, far after ω, because their code points are numerically larger. Proper Greek dictionary order treats an accented letter as a variant of its base letter, so ά belongs right beside α. This tool sorts your words the way a Greek dictionary would.

How it works

The tool uses the browser’s native Intl.Collator configured with the Greek locale el. That collator implements the CLDR Greek tailoring, a multi-level comparison algorithm. At the primary level it compares base letters (α, β, γ …). Only when two words share the same base letters does it compare secondary differences such as the tonos accent and the diaeresis, and finally case at the tertiary level. This is why αγάπη and αγαπη sort next to each other rather than far apart.

Example

Given the list ώρα, άλφα, αβγ, ζωή, a naive code-point sort would scatter the accented words. The Greek collator returns them in true dictionary order: αβγ, άλφα, ζωή, ώρα — the accented ά collating beside plain α, and ώ beside ω.

Tips

Toggle case sensitivity if you need uppercase headwords to group separately. The descending option simply reverses the collated order, which is useful for reverse glossaries. Because the comparison is locale-aware, you can paste a mix of monotonic accents and plain letters and still get a stable, predictable order.