diff --git a/convert_hf_to_gguf.py b/convert_hf_to_gguf.py
index 864692b631..3282d1d6a5 100755
--- a/convert_hf_to_gguf.py
+++ b/convert_hf_to_gguf.py
@@ -8976,6 +8976,16 @@ class ModernBertModel(BertModel):
         self.gguf_writer.add_vocab_size(self.hparams["vocab_size"])
 
     def modify_tensors(self, data_torch: Tensor, name: str, bid: int | None) -> Iterable[tuple[str, Tensor]]:
+        # rename custom "head" layers to standard bert "cls.predictions" names for compatibility
+        if name == "head.norm.weight":
+            name = "cls.predictions.transform.LayerNorm.weight"
+        elif name == "head.norm.bias":
+            name = "cls.predictions.transform.LayerNorm.bias"
+        elif name == "head.dense.weight":
+            name = "cls.predictions.transform.dense.weight"
+        elif name == "head.dense.bias":
+            name = "cls.predictions.transform.dense.bias"
+
         # These layers act as MLM head, so we don't need them
         if name.startswith("decoder."):
             return []