Croatian capitalization looks familiar at first — sentences start with a capital, names get a capital — but it parts ways with English in exactly the places where learners least expect it. The rule that trips up almost every English speaker is that days, months, languages, and nationalities are written in lowercase. Get that one habit right and you have eliminated the single most common spelling error English speakers make in Croatian.
The guiding principle is narrower than in English: Croatian capitalizes genuine proper names and the start of a sentence, and almost nothing else. Where English treats whole categories of words as inherently "important enough to capitalize" (every day of the week, every month, every nationality), Croatian asks a stricter question — is this the actual name of one specific entity? If not, it stays lowercase.
What Croatian capitalizes
The first word of a sentence
As in English, the opening word of every sentence takes a capital.
Danas je lijep dan.
Today is a nice day.
Gdje si bila cijelo jutro?
Where have you been all morning?
Personal names and surnames
First names, surnames, and nicknames are capitalized. In a full name, both parts are capitalized.
Zovem se Ana Horvat.
My name is Ana Horvat.
Sutra dolaze Marko i njegova sestra.
Marko and his sister are coming tomorrow.
Single-word geographic and institutional names
The name of a city, country, river, mountain, or a single-word institution is capitalized.
Zagreb je glavni grad Hrvatske.
Zagreb is the capital of Croatia.
Ljetujemo na Jadranu svake godine.
We holiday on the Adriatic every year.
Only the FIRST word of multi-word names and titles
This is the rule that diverges most sharply from English. In a multi-word proper name or title, Croatian capitalizes only the first word — the rest stay lowercase unless they are themselves proper names. English capitalizes nearly every significant word ("United Nations"); Croatian does not.
Ujedinjeni narodi raspravljaju o krizi.
The United Nations is discussing the crisis.
Studira na Filozofskom fakultetu u Zagrebu.
She studies at the Faculty of Humanities in Zagreb.
Pročitao sam Zločin i kaznu prošlog ljeta.
I read Crime and Punishment last summer.
Notice in the last example that Zločin (the first word of the book title) is capitalized but kaznu is not — even though English would write "Crime and Punishment." The same holds for the institution: Ujedinjeni narodi, Filozofski fakultet. The only exception inside such a name is an embedded proper noun, which keeps its own capital (Sveučilište u Zagrebu — Zagreb stays capitalized because it is a city name).
The polite Vi in letters
When you address someone formally with the polite second person — Vi, Vas, Vam, Vaš — it is conventional, as a sign of respect, to capitalize it in letters, emails, and formal correspondence. This is optional in casual writing but expected in formal letters.
Poštovani gospodine, javljam Vam se u vezi natječaja.
Dear Sir, I am writing to You regarding the job posting.
Hvala Vam na brzom odgovoru.
Thank You for the quick reply.
The same word in lowercase, vi, is the ordinary plural "you" (addressing several people). For when to use vi versus ti at all, see ti versus vi.
What Croatian does NOT capitalize
Here is where English habits actively work against you. Each of the following is lowercase in Croatian.
Days of the week
Vidimo se u ponedjeljak.
See you on Monday.
Subotom uvijek spavam dulje.
On Saturdays I always sleep in.
Months
Rođen sam u siječnju.
I was born in January.
Lipanj je ove godine bio vruć.
June was hot this year.
Languages and nationalities used as adjectives
The name of a language, and a nationality word functioning as an adjective, are lowercase.
Učim hrvatski već dvije godine.
I have been learning Croatian for two years.
Govoriš li engleski?
Do you speak English?
Kupila je hrvatsko vino i talijanski sir.
She bought Croatian wine and Italian cheese.
There is a subtlety worth knowing. The adjective is lowercase (hrvatski, engleski, talijanski), but the name of a nation as a people, when written as a proper noun, is capitalized: a Hrvat is "a Croat (man)," Hrvati are "the Croats." So hrvatski jezik (lowercase adjective, "the Croatian language") but Hrvat (capitalized noun, "a Croat"). For the full set, see nationalities and languages.
The pronoun ja
English capitalizes "I" everywhere. Croatian writes ja in lowercase — it is an ordinary word and gets no special treatment.
Ja mislim da je to dobra ideja.
I think that's a good idea.
Religions and common nouns from names
General references to a religion or its adherents are lowercase (kršćanstvo "Christianity," katolik "a Catholic" as a general descriptor), and a common noun derived from a proper name is lowercase (a rendgen "X-ray," from Röntgen; dizel "diesel," from Diesel).
U gradu žive katolici, muslimani i pravoslavci.
Catholics, Muslims, and Orthodox Christians live in the city.
English vs Croatian at a glance
This table collects the high-frequency transfer errors in one place.
| Category | English | Croatian |
|---|---|---|
| Day of week | Monday | ponedjeljak |
| Month | January | siječanj |
| Language | Croatian | hrvatski |
| Nationality (adjective) | Italian wine | talijansko vino |
| The pronoun "I" | I | ja |
| Multi-word org (non-first word) | United Nations | Ujedinjeni narodi |
| City / country | Zagreb / Croatia | Zagreb / Hrvatska |
| Personal name | Ana Horvat | Ana Horvat |
Common mistakes
❌ Vidimo se u Ponedjeljak.
Incorrect — days of the week are lowercase.
✅ Vidimo se u ponedjeljak.
See you on Monday.
❌ Učim Hrvatski jezik.
Incorrect — language names are lowercase.
✅ Učim hrvatski jezik.
I'm learning the Croatian language.
❌ Rođena je u Svibnju.
Incorrect — months are lowercase.
✅ Rođena je u svibnju.
She was born in May.
❌ Mislim da Ja imam pravo.
Incorrect — the pronoun 'ja' is never capitalized mid-sentence.
✅ Mislim da ja imam pravo.
I think that I'm right.
❌ Radi u Ministarstvu Vanjskih Poslova.
Incorrect — only the first word of the institution name is capitalized.
✅ Radi u Ministarstvu vanjskih poslova.
He works at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
❌ Knjiga se zove LJepotica i zvijer.
Incorrect — in a digraph only the first letter is capitalized.
✅ Knjiga se zove Ljepotica i zvijer.
The book is called Beauty and the Beast.
Key takeaways
- Capitalize sentence-initial words, personal names, and single-word place and institution names.
- In multi-word names and titles, capitalize only the first word (plus any embedded proper noun).
- Days, months, languages, nationality-adjectives, and the pronoun ja are all lowercase.
- In a capitalized digraph, only the first letter is capital: Nj, Lj, Dž.
- The polite Vi is capitalized in formal letters as a courtesy.
Now practice Croatian
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Start learning Croatian→Related Topics
- PunctuationA2 — Croatian comma, quotation marks, and sentence punctuation conventions.
- Typing Croatian DiacriticsA1 — How to produce č, ć, š, ž, đ on keyboards, and the dj/dž fallbacks.
- Countries, Nationalities and LanguagesA2 — The grammar of country names, nationalities and languages in Croatian — feminine adjectival country names like Hrvatska, the Hrvat/Hrvatica nationality pairs, neuter language names like hrvatski, and 'iz' + genitive for origin.
- ti vs Vi: Formal and Informal YouA1 — Croatian splits 'you' into informal ti and formal/respectful Vi — and the one rule everyone gets wrong is that Vi takes plural verb agreement even for a single person.
- Days, Months, and SeasonsA1 — The week, Croatia's striking NATIVE month names (siječanj, not januar), and the seasons — plus the rule that splits 'on Monday' (u + accusative) from 'in May' (u + locative).