Choosing a Kurdish font

Every font here carries language badges produced by machine, never typed in by hand. A Kurdish badge means the file was opened, its character set inspected, and real Kurdish words shaped through it with the Kurdish language tag applied.

Verified means it passed all of that. Partial means the letters are present but something in the shaping is incomplete — most often the joining. No badge means the check could not be run, and we would rather show nothing than guess.

Badges narrow the field; they do not finish the job. They tell you a font is technically sound for Kurdish, not that it is right for your headline, your body text, or your readers.

Type your own words into the tester rather than a sample sentence chosen to flatter the font. Real copy contains the letters you use, the names you need, and the punctuation you will actually hit.

Include the awkward parts on purpose: the five Kurdish-only letters, any numerals, and any Latin words or URLs that will sit inside the Kurdish text. Set it at the size you will really use — a face that is beautiful at 48px can be unreadable at 15px.

Then read the result instead of glancing at it. Most font problems in Kurdish announce themselves within a single sentence, provided somebody actually reads the sentence.

For interfaces and long body text, favour clarity over character: open counters, distinct letter shapes, and a weight that stays legible on a phone. Moderate stroke contrast survives small sizes; extreme contrast does not.

For headlines and display work you can afford personality, tighter spacing and heavier weights. The letters are large enough that fine detail reads as detail instead of turning to mud.

Check that the family actually has the weights you need before you commit to it. A design that leans on a bold which does not exist will have that bold faked by the software, and faked bold in Arabic script thickens the joins into blots.

A font you cannot lawfully use is not a candidate, however good it looks. Every family here carries a licence status, and that status is the reason this library exists at all.

An open licence lets you use, embed and redistribute the font under stated conditions — usually including keeping the licence file alongside it. Permission on file means the designer gave us written permission that we hold on record. Where a font is published on our own judgement without licence evidence, its page says the licence is unverified, in plain words, and we make no licence claim about it anywhere.

Treat an unverified licence as unresolved for commercial work. Ask us, or ask the designer, before it goes into something you sell.

Almost no Kurdish text is purely Kurdish. Brand names, product names, URLs and numerals arrive in Latin script, and they will be set in something — either the same font or a fallback you did not choose.

So look at the Latin in the font you are considering. If it is missing or poor, choose the fallback deliberately and pair it on purpose, matching x-height and weight rather than leaving it to chance.

Kurmanji is written in Latin script and needs ç, ê, î, ş and û. A font that handles English will not automatically handle Kurmanji — test those five exactly as you would test the Arabic-script five.