Gerudo (Zelda BoTW)

Gerudo is the script of the Gerudo people, a matriarchal warrior tribe settled in the southern desert of Hyrule, in the The Legend of Zelda franchise (Nintendo). It appears on Gerudo City inscriptions, Gerudo Valley signposts, and certain pages of the Hyrule Compendium in Breath of the Wild (2017) and Tears of the Kingdom (2023).

CipherChronicle now ships the complete BoTW Zelda trio:

• Hylian — Hyrule’s common alphabet, found on signposts and shrines.
• Sheikah — ritual script of the ancient technology (shrines, guardians, tablets).
• Gerudo — here, the script of the desert Gerudo people.

Each script has a distinct narrative role in the game: Hylian as common tongue, Sheikah as magical technology, Gerudo as regional culture.

How does the alphabet work?

The cipher uses a monoalphabetic substitution: every letter of the plaintext is replaced by a glyph drawn from a fixed correspondence table. It is one of the oldest cryptographic techniques on record — already described in antiquity (Caesar cipher, ~50 BC) — and the most directly readable family for a beginner.

The table holds 26 glyphs for the 26 Latin letters, plus 2 digits (1 and 5) and 2 punctuation marks (! and ?) — exactly what appears in the BoTW and TotK in-game inscriptions. To encrypt, read the text character by character and replace each covered character with its glyph.

Cryptographic strength: weak. Because every plaintext letter always maps to the same glyph, the cipher falls to a frequency analysis in a few dozen words (in both English and French, E remains the most common letter, an immediate entry point). Monoalphabetic substitutions are therefore used today for their decorative, playful or pedagogical value — not to protect real information.

Historical and modern usage

• Zelda BoTW / TotK (2017, 2023) — Gerudo City inscriptions, desert signposts, collectible pages.
• Fan community — used in Riju / Urbosa cosplay, in speedrunner puzzles.
• BoTW trio — to be used together with Hylian and Sheikah for Zelda-themed puzzles.

Related variants

• Hylian (BoTW) — see our dedicated entry.
• Sheikah — see our dedicated entry.

What are the weaknesses?

• Monoalphabetic substitution — immediate frequency analysis.
• Incomplete digit coverage — only 1 and 5 appear in-game; encrypting an arbitrary number requires spelling it out.
• Documented alphabet — Zelda Wiki, dCode, Nintendo guides.

The 26 glyphs

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

M

N

O

P

Q

R

S

T

U

V

W

X

Y

Z

The other characters

1

5

!

?