CJKV character 次 (U+6B21) in traditional and simplified Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and Japanese forms
The Chinese, Japanese and Korean (also known as CJK) scripts share a common background, collectively known as CJK characters. During the process called Han unification, the common (shared) characters were identified and named CJK Unified Ideographs. As of Unicode 18.0, Unicode defines a total of 101,997 characters.[1]
Until the early 20th century, Vietnam also used Chinese characters (Chữ Nôm), so sometimes the abbreviation CJKV is used.
Sources
The Ideographic Research Group (IRG) is responsible for developing extensions to the encoded repertoires of CJK unified ideographs. IRG processes proposals for new CJK unified ideographs submitted by its member bodies, and after undergoing several rounds of expert review, IRG submits a consolidated set of characters to ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2 Working Group 2 (WG2) and the Unicode Technical Committee (UTC) for consideration for inclusion in the ISO/IEC 10646 and Unicode standards. The following IRG member bodies have been involved in the standardization of CJK unified ideographs:
SAT Daizōkyō Text Database Committee (liaison member)
The ideographs submitted by the UTC and the United Kingdom are not specific to any particular region, but are characters which have been suggested for encoding by individual experts. The ideographs submitted by SAT are required for the SAT Daizōkyō text database.
The table below gives the numbers of encoded CJK unified ideographs for each IRG source for Unicode .[5] The total number of characters (268,454) far exceeds the number of encoded CJK unified ideographs (101,997) as many characters have more than one source.
The ordering of CJK Unified Ideographs within Unicode blocks (not counting those added to the block later) was initially determined by consulting the following four dictionaries. Primarily, they were arranged in Kangxi Dictionary order, with the other dictionaries consulted, in order, for characters not found in the Kangxi Dictionary, to determine which Kangxi Dictionary character they should follow in the ordering.[7]
This system is not used for more recently-added Unicode blocks. The Ideographic Research Group no longer uses the Dae Jaweon,[8] nor the Dai Kan-Wa Jiten,[9] in its work. The Kangxi Dictionary and Hanyu Da Zidian are still used[8] both in existing character source references,[10] and as potential replacements for existing source references discovered to be erroneous.[11] Similarly, although a (real or virtual) Kangxi Dictionary index was previously provided as part of the submission data for UTC-source characters, this is no longer the case.[12] Instead, the stroke type of the first residual stroke (first stroke which does not form part of the radical) is supplied with all submitted characters, and used to order characters with the same radical and stroke count within the new Unicode block.[13]
This block is also known as the Unified Repertoire and Ordering (URO), especially when it needs to be differentiated from the other CJK Unified Ideographs blocks.[14]
The first 20,902 characters in the block are arranged according to the Kangxi Dictionary ordering of radicals. In this system the characters written with the fewest strokes are listed first. The remaining characters were added later, and so are not in radical order.
The block is the result of Han unification,[15] which was somewhat controversial within East Asia.[16] Since single characters used in more than one of Chinese, Japanese and Korean were coded in the same location, and the modern typographical conventions and handwriting curricula differ slightly between regions (not necessarily along language boundaries—for example, Hong Kong and Taiwan, which both use Traditional Chinese, have slightly different local conventions),[17] the appearance of a selected glyph could depend on the particular font being used. However, the URO applies the source separation rule, meaning that pairs of characters treated as distinct in a character set used as a source for the URO (e.g. JIS X 0208 as used in e.g. Shift JIS) would remain pairs of separate characters in the new Unicode encoding.[18]
Note: Most characters appear in multiple sources, so the sum of individual character counts (108,493) is far greater than the number of encoded characters (20,992).[22]
Culture and Art Publishing House Ideographs (文化艺术出版社用字)
7
GCE
Names of newly-discovered chemical elements as assigned by the China National Committee for Terms in Sciences and Technologies and the China National Language and Character Working Committee (全国科学技术名词审定委员会，国家语言文字工作委员会)
4
GCESI
Characters collected by China Electronics Standardization Institute (中国电子技术标准化研究院)
3
GDM
Place name characters from the Public Order Administration, Ministry of Public Security of the People's Republic of China
In Unicode 4.1, 14 HKSCS-2004 characters and 8 GB 18030 characters were assigned to between U+9FA6 and U+9FBB code points. Since then, other additions were added to this block for various reasons, all summarized in the version history section below.
Note: Most characters appear in more than one source, so the sum of individual character counts (24,010) is far greater than the number of encoded characters (6,592).[22]
The block named CJK Unified Ideographs Extension B (20000–2A6DF) contains 42,720 characters in the range U+20000 through U+2A6DF. These include most of the characters used in the Kangxi Dictionary that are not in the basic CJK Unified Ideographs block, as well as many Hán-Nôm characters that were formerly used to write Vietnamese.
Note: Many characters appear in more than one source, so the sum of individual character counts (101,041) is far greater than the number of encoded characters (42,720).[22]
The block named CJK Unified Ideographs Extension C (2A700–2B73F) contains 4,160 characters in the range U+2A700 through U+2B73F. It was initially added in Unicode 5.2 (2009).
Note: Some characters appear in more than one source, so the sum of individual character counts (4,986) is greater than the number of encoded characters (4,160).[22]
Character Information Development and Maintenance Project for e-Government "MojiJoho-Kiban Project"
64
North Korea
KP1
KPS 10721-2000
9
9
South Korea
K5
KS X 1027–4:2011 (formerly Korean IRG Hanja Character Set 5th Edition: 2001)
404
408
K6
KS X 1027–5:2021
3
KC
Korean History On-Line
1
Macau
MC
Macau Supplementary Character Set (MSCS) reference
17
21
MD
Macau Supplementary Character Set (MSCS) horizontal extensions
4
Taiwan
T4
CNS 11643-1992 plane 4
1
1,757
T5
CNS 11643-1992 plane 5
1
T6
CNS 11643-1992 plane 6
2
TB
CNS 11643-2007 plane 11
2
TC
CNS 11643-2007 plane 12
634
TD
CNS 11643-2007 plane 13
767
TE
CNS 11643-2007 plane 14
350
United Kingdom
UK
IRG N2107R2
1
1
Vietnam
V0
TCVN 5773:1993
4
795
V1
TCVN 6056:1995
2
V2
VHN 01–1998
1
V4
Hán Nôm Coded Character Repertoire
782
VN
Vietnamese horizontal and vertical extensions
6
N/A
UTC
UTC sources
89
89
CJK Unified Ideographs Extension D
The block named CJK Unified Ideographs Extension D (2B740–2B81F) contains 223 characters in the range U+2B740 through U+2B81E. It was originally added in Unicode 6.0 (2010).
Note: Some characters appear in more than one source, so the sum of individual character counts (271) is greater than the number of encoded characters (223).[22]
Character Information Development and Maintenance Project for e-Government "MojiJoho-Kiban Project"
10
Taiwan
TB
CNS 11643-2007 plane 11
24
24
N/A
UTC
UTC sources
20
20
CJK Unified Ideographs Extension E
The block named CJK Unified Ideographs Extension E (2B820–2CEAF) contains 5,774 characters in the range U+2B820 through U+2CEAD. It was originally added in Unicode 8.0 (2015).
Note: Some characters appear in more than one source, so the sum of individual character counts (6,340) is greater than the number of encoded characters (5,774).[22]
Names of newly-discovered chemical elements as assigned by the China National Committee for Terms in Sciences and Technologies and the China National Language and Character Working Committee (全国科学技术名词审定委员会，国家语言文字工作委员会)
4
GCESI
Characters collected by China Electronics Standardization Institute
209
GCH
Cihai
112
GCY
Ciyuan
1
GCYY
Chinese Academy of Surveying and Mapping ideographs
98
GDM
Place name characters from the Public Order Administration, Ministry of Public Security of the People's Republic of China
10
GDZ
Geographic Publishing House ideographs (地质出版社用字)
1
GGFZ
Tongyong Guifan Hanzi Zidian
4
GGH
Gudai Hanyu Cidian
175
GGT
Characters collected by the National Library of China
2
GHC
Hanyu Da Cidian (漢語大詞典)
3
GHZR
Hanyu Da Zidian 2nd ed. (汉语大字典, 第二版)
5
GIDC
ID System of the Ministry of Public Security of China
37
GJZ
Commercial Press ideographs
147
GKJ
Terms in Sciences and Technologies approved by the China National Committee for Terms in Sciences and Technologies (CNCTST)
Characters for use in personal names in China from Public Order Administration, Ministry of Public Security of the People's Republic of China
1
GZ
Ancient Zhuang Character Dictionary
107
GZFY
Hanyu Fangyan Dacidian
712
GZHSJ
Characters collected by the Zhonghua Book Company (中华书局)
1
GZJW
Yin Zhou Jinwen Jicheng Yinde
1,410
Hong Kong
HD
Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set, 2016
1
1
Japan
JK
Japanese Kokuji Collection (Mojikyō subset)
415
503
JMJ
Character Information Development and Maintenance Project for e-Government "MojiJoho-Kiban Project"
88
South Korea
KC
Korean History On-Line
7
7
Macau
MC
Macau Supplementary Character Set (MSCS) reference
48
51
MD
Macau Supplementary Character Set (MSCS) horizontal extensions
3
Taiwan
T3
CNS 11643-1992 plane 3
2
1,262
T5
CNS 11643-1992 plane 5
1
TB
CNS 11643-2007 plane 11
2
TC
CNS 11643-2007 plane 12
323
TD
CNS 11643-2007 plane 13
595
TE
CNS 11643-2007 plane 14
339
United Kingdom
UK
IRG N2107R2
2
2
Vietnam
V0
TCVN 5773:1993
7
1,037
V2
VHN 01–1998
1
V4
Hán Nôm Coded Character Repertoire
1,023
VN
Vietnamese horizontal and vertical extensions
6
N/A
UTC
UTC sources
237
237
CJK Unified Ideographs Extension F
The block named CJK Unified Ideographs Extension F (2CEB0–2EBEF) contains 7,473 characters in the range U+2CEB0 through 2EBE0 that were added in Unicode 10.0 (2017). It includes more than 1,000 Sawndip characters for Zhuang.
Note: Some characters appear in more than one source, so the sum of individual character counts (8,098) is greater than the number of encoded characters (7,473).[22]
Note: Some characters appear in more than one source, so the sum of individual character counts (5,353) is greater than the number of encoded characters (4,939).[22]
Note: Some characters appear in more than one source, so the sum of individual character counts (4,573) is greater than the number of encoded characters (4,192).[22]
Note: Some characters appear in more than one source, making the sum of individual character counts (780) more than the number of encoded characters (622).[22]
Note: Some characters appear in more than one source, making the sum of individual character counts (4,469) more than the number of encoded characters (4,298).[22]
General Purpose Hanzi List for Modern Chinese Language, and General List of Simplified Hanzi (现代汉语通用字表)
1
GCA
Culture and Art Publishing House Ideographs (文化艺术出版社用字)
17
GDM
Place name characters from the Public Order Administration, Ministry of Public Security of the People's Republic of China
144
GKJ
Terms in Sciences and Technologies approved by the China National Committee for Terms in Sciences and Technologies (CNCTST)
567
GWY
Cultural Heritage Ideographs (文化遗产用字)
40
GXM
Characters for use in personal names in China from Public Order Administration, Ministry of Public Security of the People's Republic of China
5
GZ
Ancient Zhuang Character Dictionary
290
South Korea
KC
Korean History On-Line
178
178
Taiwan
T11
CNS 11643 (pending new version) plane 17
1
940
T7
CNS 11643-1992 plane 7
2
T9
CNS 11643 (pending new version) plane 9
59
TB
CNS 11643-2007 plane 11
70
TC
CNS 11643-2007 plane 12
165
TD
CNS 11643-2007 plane 13
241
TE
CNS 11643-2007 plane 14
396
TF
CNS 11643-2007 plane 15
6
United Kingdom
UK
IRG N2232R
6
906
UK
IRG N2487
900
Vietnam
V0
TCVN 5773:1993
16
991
V1
TCVN 6056:1995
1
V2
VHN 01–1998
2
V3
VHN 02–1998
1
V4
Hán Nôm Coded Character Repertoire
58
VN
Vietnamese horizontal and vertical extensions
913
Buddhist canon
SAT
SAT Daizōkyō Text Database
259
260
SATM
SAT manuscript collection for Buddhist studies
1
N/A
UTC
UTC sources
129
129
CJK Compatibility Ideographs
The block named CJK Compatibility Ideographs (F900–FAFF) was created to retain round-trip compatibility with other standards.
However, twelve characters in this block actually have the "Unified Ideograph" property: U+FA0E 﨎, U+FA0F 﨏, U+FA11 﨑, U+FA13 﨓, U+FA14 﨔, U+FA1F 﨟, U+FA21 﨡, U+FA23 﨣, U+FA24 﨤, U+FA27 﨧, U+FA28 﨨, and U+FA29 﨩.[1] None of the other characters in this and other "Compatibility" blocks relate to CJK unification.
While 龜 and 亀 are not considered unifiable, U+FA20蘒CJK COMPATIBILITY IDEOGRAPH-FA20 is considered a duplicate to U+8612蘒CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH-8612.
Note: All characters appear in more than one source, so the sum of individual character counts (40) is greater than the number of encoded characters (12).[22]
Culture and Art Publishing House Ideographs (文化艺术出版社用字)
1
12
GDM
Place name characters from the Public Order Administration, Ministry of Public Security of the People's Republic of China
1
GU
No source (the original source reference has been moved or removed)
10
Hong Kong
H
Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set, 2008
1
3
HB2
Big-5, Level 2
2
Japan
J3
JIS X 0213:2004 Level 3
72
101
J4
JIS X 0213:2004 Level 4
9
JA
Japanese IT Vendors Contemporary Ideographs, 1993
1
JA3
JIS X 0213:2004 level-3 characters replacing JA characters
1
JARIB
ARIB STD-B24 Version 5.1, March 14 2007
3
JMJ
Character Information Development and Maintenance Project for e-Government "MojiJoho-Kiban Project"
15
North Korea
KP1
KPS 10721-2000
106
107
KPU
The source reference for this ideograph has been moved; the value is its code point.
1
South Korea
K0
KS X 1001:2004 (formerly KS C 5601–1987)
270
270
Taiwan
TF
CNS 11643-2007 plane 15
1
1
Vietnam
V0
TCVN 5773:1993
3
3
N/A
UTC
UTC sources
34
34
Known issues
Disunification
U+4039
The character U+4039 (䀹) was a unification of two different characters (one with jiā 夾 phonetic and one with shǎn 㚒 phonetic) until Unicode 5.0. However, they were lexically different characters that should not have been unified; they have different pronunciations and different meanings.
The proposal of disunification of U+4039[28] was accepted for Unicode 5.1, encoding a new character at U+9FC3 (鿃) to represent shǎn.
Other 3 glyphs in Extension B
In CJK Unified Ideographs Extension B, some characters were incorrectly unified with others. These characters include U+2017B (𠅻), U+204AF (𠒯) and U+24CB2 (𤲲). The first two characters contained a wrong unification of Chinese and Vietnamese source of their glyph, while the last one unifies the Chinese and Taiwanese ones.[29]
The glyphs for U+2017B (𠅻) and U+204AF (𠒯) were corrected in version 10.0, and the erroneous UCS2003 source glyph U+24CB2 (𤲲) was removed in version 13.0.
Unifiable variants and exact duplicates
Also in CJK Unified Ideographs Extension B, hundreds of glyph variants were encoded by mistake.[30] Additionally, an ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2 report has found that six exact duplicates (where the same character has inadvertently been encoded twice) and two semi-duplicates (where the CJK-B character represents a de facto disunification of two glyph forms unified in the corresponding BMP character) were encoded by mistake:[31]
U+34A8 㒨 = U+20457 𠑗: U+20457 is the same as the China-source glyph for U+34A8, but it is significantly different from the Taiwan-source glyph for U+34A8
U+3DB7 㶷 = U+2420E 𤈎: same glyph shapes
U+8641 虁 = U+27144 𧅄: U+27144 is the same as the Korean-source glyph for U+8641, but it is significantly different from the mainland China-, Taiwan- and Japan-source glyphs for U+8641
U+204F2 𠓲 = U+23515 𣔕: same glyph shapes, but ordered under different radicals
U+249BC 𤦼 = U+249E9 𤧩: same glyph shapes
U+24BD2 𤯒 = U+2A415 𪐕: same glyph shapes, but ordered under different radicals
U+26842 𦡂 = U+26866 𦡦: same glyph shapes
U+FA23 﨣 = U+27EAF 𧺯: same glyph shapes (U+FA23 﨣 is a unified CJK ideograph, despite its name "CJK COMPATIBILITY IDEOGRAPH-FA23.")
Other CJK ideographs in Unicode, not Unified
Apart from the eleven blocks of "Unified Ideographs," Unicode has about a dozen more blocks with not-unified CJK-characters. These are mainly CJK radicals, strokes, punctuation, marks, symbols and compatibility characters. Although some characters have their (decomposable) counterparts in other blocks, the usages can be different. An example of a not-unified CJK-character is U+3007〇IDEOGRAPHIC NUMBER ZERO in the CJK Symbols and Punctuation block. Although it is not covered under "CJK Unified Ideographs", it is treated as a CJK-character for all other intents and purposes.[32]
Four blocks of compatibility characters are included for compatibility with legacy text handling systems and older character sets:
They include forms of characters for vertical text layout and rich text characters that Unicode recommends handling through other means. Therefore, their use is discouraged.
Unihan database
The Unihan database maintained by the Unicode Consortium provides information about all of the unified Han characters encoded in the Unicode Standard, including mappings to various national and industry standards, indices into standard dictionaries, encoded variants, pronunciations in various languages, and an English definition. The database is available to the public as text files[33] and via an interactive website.[34][35] The latter also includes representative glyphs and definitions for compound words drawn from the free Japanese EDICT and Chinese CEDICT dictionary projects (which are provided for convenience and are not a formal part of the Unicode Standard).
Font support
The blocks CJK Unified Ideographs and CJK Unified Ideographs Extension A, being parts of the Basic Multilingual Plane, are supported by the majority of the CJK fonts. However, Japanese and Korean fonts usually have fewer characters (about 13,000 and 8,000, respectively) than Chinese. Extensions B, C, D are supported by additional fonts MingLiU-ExtB, MingLiU_HKSCS-ExtB, PMingLiU-ExtB, SimSun-ExtB included in Microsoft Windows since Vista.[36]
Unicode version history
CJK unified ideograph additions per Unicode version
12"3.3. Dictionary Indices". Unicode Han Database (Unihan). UAX #38. Three of the dictionary properties represent official IRG indices for the dictionaries used in the four dictionary sorting algorithm. Two (kIRGHanyuDaZidian and kIRGKangXi) are still being used by the IRG, but the other one (kIRGDaeJaweon) is not.
↑"2. Text File Data". U-Source Ideographs. Unicode Consortium. UAX #45. A KangXi dictionary index for the ideograph, as described in Unicode Standard Annex #38, "Unicode Han Database (Unihan)" [UAX38]. This field is no longer used and contains no data.
↑Lunde, Ken (2024-09-30). "Proposal to remove FS (first residual stroke) value from submissions"(PDF). ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2/IRG N2713. This document proposes that the inclusion of first residual stroke (aka FS) values be removed from the submission requirements for new CJK Unified Ideographs […] The ISO/IEC 10646 Project Editor, when compiling an IRG working set into a new CJK Unified Ideographs extension block, uses the FS values to sort ideographs that share the same Radical-Stroke (Radical + SC) value.
↑Suzanne Topping,
"The secret life of Unicode". Archived from the original on 2007-11-14. Retrieved 2010-05-12.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
↑Lunde, Ken (2009). "Chapter 3: Character Set Standards § Chinese Character Set Standards—Singapore". CJKV information processing (2nded.). Sebastopol, Calif.: O'Reilly Media, Inc. p.130. ISBN978-0-596-15611-4. OCLC317878469. To what extent these 226 characters are ad-hoc, or codified by a Singapore national standard, is unknown, at least to me. My suspicion is that they are ad-hoc simply for the apparent lack of any Singapore national standard.
You are visitor 01402503 — GeezerVison does not store the pages you look up. Best viewed with Netscape Navigator 4.7 or Internet Explorer 6 at 800×600. No cookies required.
