How does Portuguese alphabetical order treat accents?

In the Unicode CLDR Portuguese collation, accented vowels such as ã, â, á, à, é and ô sort as variants of their base vowel, and ç sorts with c. So maçã sits next to maca rather than after z. Accents only decide order when two strings are otherwise identical.

Does this follow a real standard?

Yes. It uses the browser's built-in Intl.Collator with the Portuguese locale, which implements the Unicode CLDR collation rules for Portuguese. That is the same ordering used by modern operating systems and databases configured for Portuguese.

What does the numeric option do?

Numeric (natural) order compares embedded numbers by value rather than character by character, so item2 comes before item10. Leave it off for plain dictionary order where 10 would sort before 2.

Can it sort full names and phrases?

Yes. Each line is treated as one entry, so you can sort surnames, place names, or multi-word phrases. Spaces and punctuation are compared using the same collation, with letters taking priority.

Is my list sent anywhere?

No. Sorting happens entirely in your browser using the local collator. Nothing is uploaded, so it is safe for private name lists or unpublished content.

Portuguese Alphabetical Sort

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This tool sorts Portuguese words, names, and phrases into correct alphabetical order. Portuguese has a rich set of accented vowels and the cedilla, and naive byte or ASCII sorting pushes them to the wrong place. Here they sort exactly where a Portuguese reader expects, following the official Unicode ordering.

How it works

The tool delegates to the browser’s Intl.Collator configured with the Portuguese locale, which implements the Unicode CLDR Portuguese collation. In that collation, accented vowels and ç carry the same primary weight as their base letter:

a = á = à = â = ã   (primary level)
c = ç
e = é = ê
o = ó = ô = õ

So maçã and maca compare equal at the primary level and only the diacritic breaks the tie at a secondary level. The result is that accented words interleave naturally with unaccented ones instead of being dumped after z. Options let you choose case ordering, enable numeric (natural) order so item2 precedes item10, and reverse to descending.

Tips and example

Given the input maçã, maca, árvore, avó, avô, ano, the Portuguese collation produces ano, árvore, avô, avó, maca, maçã — árvore sorts under a, and the avô/avó pair is separated only by their final accent. Use the numeric option for file names or codes that mix words and numbers, and keep case ordering on default unless you specifically need uppercase or lowercase to lead.