Another Word For It Patrick Durusau on Topic Maps and Semantic Diversity

December 18, 2013

Character(s) in Unicode 6.3.0

Filed under: Typography,Unicode — Patrick Durusau @ 2:04 pm

Search for character(s) in Unicode 6.3.0 by Tomas Schild.

A site that allows you to search the latest Unicode character set by:

  • Word or phrase from the official Unicode character name
  • Word or phrase from the old, deprecated Unicode 1.0 character name
  • A single character
  • The hexadecimal value of the Unicode postion
  • Search for numerical value

When you need just one or two characters to encode for HTML, this could be very handy.

Be aware that the search engine does not compensate from spelling differences in the Unicode character list.

Thus, a search for “aleph” returns:

Unicode
code point
UTF-8
encoding
(hex.)
Unicode character name
U+10840 f0 90 a1 80 IMPERIAL ARAMAIC LETTER ALEPH
U+10B40 f0 90 ad 80 INSCRIPTIONAL PARTHIAN LETTER ALEPH
U+10B60 f0 90 ad a0 INSCRIPTIONAL PAHLAVI LETTER ALEPH
U+1202A f0 92 80 aa CUNEIFORM SIGN ALEPH

Whereas a search for “alef” returns:

128 characters found

Unicode
code point
UTF-8
encoding
(hex.)
Unicode character name
U+05D0 d7 90 HEBREW LETTER ALEF
U+0616 d8 96 ARABIC SMALL HIGH LIGATURE ALEF WITH LAM WITH YEH
U+0622 d8 a2 ARABIC LETTER ALEF WITH MADDA ABOVE
U+0623 d8 a3 ARABIC LETTER ALEF WITH HAMZA ABOVE
U+0625 d8 a5 ARABIC LETTER ALEF WITH HAMZA BELOW
U+0627 d8 a7 ARABIC LETTER ALEF
U+0649 d9 89 ARABIC LETTER ALEF MAKSURA
Remaining 121 characters omitted

Semitic alphabets all contain the alef/aleph character which represents a glottal stop.

I have no immediate explanation for why the Unicode standard chose different names for the same character in different languages.

But, be aware that it does happen.

BTW, I modified the tables to omit the character and other fields.

WordPress seems to have difficulty with Imperial Aramaic, Inscriptional Parthian, Inscriptional Pahlavi, and Cuneiform code points for aleph.

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