This document describes the organization and content of the Unihan database.
StatusThis document has been reviewed by Unicode members and other interested parties, and has been approved for publication by the Unicode Consortium. This is a stable document and may be used as reference material or cited as a normative reference by other specifications.
A Unicode Standard Annex (UAX) forms an integral part of the Unicode Standard, but is published online as a separate document. The Unicode Standard may require conformance to normative content in a Unicode Standard Annex, if so specified in the Conformance chapter of that version of the Unicode Standard. The version number of a UAX document corresponds to the version of the Unicode Standard of which it forms a part.
Please submit corrigenda and other comments with the online reporting form [Feedback]. Related information that is useful in understanding this annex is found in Unicode Standard Annex #41, “Common References for Unicode Standard Annexes.” For the latest version of the Unicode Standard, see [Unicode]. For a list of current Unicode Technical Reports, see [Reports]. For more information about versions of the Unicode Standard, see [Versions]. For any errata which may apply to this annex, see [Errata].
ContentsThe Unihan database is the repository for the Unicode Consortium’s collective knowledge regarding the Han ideographs contained in the Unicode Standard. It contains mapping data to allow conversion to and from other coded character sets and additional information to help implement support for the various languages which use the Han script.
Formally, ideographs are defined within the Unicode Standard via their mappings. That is, the Unicode Standard does not formally define what the ideograph U+4E00 一 is; rather, it defines it as being the equivalent of, say, 0x523B in GB/T 2312, 0x14421 in CNS 11643, 0x306C in JIS X 0208, and so on.
In practice, implementation of Han ideographs requires large amounts of ancillary data. Input methods require information such as readings, as do collation algorithms. Data in character sets not included in the world of international standards bodies needs to be converted. Relationships between ideographs need to be defined to allow for fuzzy string matching. Beyond all this, it’s important to track not only what properties a given ideograph has, but who claims it has those properties.
Unlike characters in Western scripts such as Latin and Greek, whose basic property is their sound, which stays largely constant across languages, the basic property for Han ideographs is their meaning. This isn’t to say that ideographs are truly ideographic, in that they represent abstract ideas; but they generally have one root meaning from which the others derive, and generally retain the bulk of their semantic content across linguistic boundaries. Most ideographs are divided into a determinative, which gives a vague sense of meaning, and a phonetic, which gives a vague sense of pronunciation. The Unihan database therefore includes structural analyses and definitions for Han ideographs.
This document is a guide to that data, describing the mechanics of the Unihan database, the nature of its contents, and the status of the various properties.
2 Mechanics 2.1 Database DesignThe database consists of a number of fields containing data for each Han ideograph in the Unicode Standard. The fields, all of which correspond to properties, have names that consist entirely of ASCII letters and digits with no spaces or other punctuation except for underscore. For historical reasons, they all start with a lowercase k.
All data in the Unihan database is stored in UTF-8 using Normalization Form C (NFC). Note, however, that the “Syntax” descriptions below, used for validation of property values, operate on Normalization Form D (NFD), primarily because that makes the regular expressions simpler.
2.1.1 Extension of Unihan Properties to Non-Unihan CharactersSome characters which are not unified ideographs are considered equivalent to unified ideographs. As such, some of the properties defined in this document are applicable to these characters as well, where appropriate. For example, U+2F8D ⾍ KANGXI RADICAL INSECT is equivalent to U+866B; therefore, properties such as kCantonese (cung4), or kCangjie (LMI) may be inferred as needed for U+2F8D ⾍ KANGXI RADICAL INSECT.
This extension process is particularly useful for the kRSUnicode and kTotalStrokes properties.
The Equivalent_Unified_Ideograph property in the Unicode Character Database [UCD] is used to indicate which non-ideographs and unified ideographs are considered equivalent for these purposes. It is explicitly intended to enable kRSUnicode and kTotalStrokes property values for non-ideographs to be derived from their equivalent unified ideographs. See Unicode Standard Annex #44, “Unicode Character Database” [UAX44], for more information.
2.1.2 Sorting Algorithm Used by the Radical-Stroke IndexesThe Unicode Standard includes a set of radical-stroke indexes for ease in determining the code point of encoded ideographs. Each Han ideograph will occur one or more times in the radical-stroke indexes, with one occurrence per value of its kRSUnicode property. Entries in the radical-stroke indexes are ordered using a 64-bit collation key calculated as follows:
Bits 0–19 represent the ideograph’s code point. This is more space than is actually needed, but it has the advantage of aligning the code point along a four-bit boundary.
Bits 20–27 represent the ideograph’s block. This block value is 0 for ideographs in the CJK Unified Ideographs block, 1 for ideographs in the CJK Unified Ideographs Extension A, 2 for ideographs in the CJK Unified Ideographs Extension B block, and so on. The special values 254 (0xFE) and 255 (0xFF) are used for ideographs in the CJK Compatibility Ideographs and CJK Compatibility Ideographs Supplement blocks, respectively. This allows accommodation for future CJK Unified Ideograph Extension blocks and guarantees that compatibility ideographs always follow unified ideographs. Note that additional compatibility ideograph blocks will not be encoded in the future.
Bits 28–31 are used to indicate whether the entry has a simplified form for the radical or not. A value of 0 indicates the traditional form for the radical (for example, U+9F8D 龍); a value of 1 indicates the Chinese simplified form of the radical (for example, U+9F99 龙); a value of 2 indicates a non-Chinese simplified form of the radical (for example, U+7ADC 竜); and a value of 3 indicates a second non-Chinese simplified form of the radical (for example, U+31DE5 𱷥).
Bits 32–35 are reserved to hold the entry’s first residual stroke, as defined by the Ideographic Research Group (IRG), a subgroup of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2/WG 2. Data for the first residual stroke is currently unavailable. Therefore, these bits are set to 0 in the current data.
Bits 36–43 are used for the entry’s residual stroke count. If the residual stroke count is negative, 0 is substituted.
Bits 44–51 are used for the entry’s Kangxi radical.
Bits 52–63 are unused.
This collation key is defined in such a fashion that it can easily be parsed by eye. Figure 1 illustrates its overall structure.
Figure 1. Radical-Stroke Index Collation Key Schema
Examples:
U+4E95 井 is assigned the collation key 0x0000702000004E95.U+3687 㚇 has two values in its kRSUnicode property value and therefore two entries in the radical-stroke indexes. These two entries are assigned the collation keys 0x0002306000103687 and 0x0004206000103687.U+F936 虜 is assigned the collation key 0x0008D0600FE0F936.U+21FEB 𡿫 is assigned the collation key 0x0002F03000221FEB.U+9F8D 龍, U+9F99 龙, U+7ADC 竜, and U+31DE5 𱷥 are assigned the collation keys 0x000D400000009F8D, 0x000D400010009F99, 0x0007505000007ADC/0x000D400020007ADC, and 0x0007506000831DE5/0x000D400030831DE5, respectively.In addition to the radical-stroke indexes that are distributed as PDF files, the Unicode Standard also includes a “plain text” data file representation of the main radical-stroke index that includes all Han ideographs in that particular version of the standard. This data file is intended for developers who would benefit from a machine-readable implementation of the collation algorithm as applied to the current repertoire of Han ideographs, and for CJK specialists who prefer to work with data files. The format of the data file consists of the following two tab-delimited fields: 1) a unique radical-stroke value pair that is separated by a period; and 2) one or more Unicode Scalar Values for Han ideographs in collation order per this section. The actual Han ideographs that correspond to the Unicode Scalar Values in the second field are provided as comments. An example line from the data file is shown below:
211.0 U+9F52 U+2398A U+2398B U+2EBBD U+9F7F U+6B6F # 齒𣦊𣦋𮮽齿歯 2.2 Unihan.zip
Included with the [UCD] is a file called Unihan.zip. This is a snapshot of the public contents of the Unihan database as of the release date for this version of the Unicode Standard.
The zip file is an archive of eight text files, each in UTF-8, NFC, and using Unix line endings. Each file contains the values for some of the properties in the Unihan database.
Each file contains those properties which belong to one of the general categories described below; that is, Unihan_Readings.txt contains all the data for all the properties in the Readings category, and so on.
The grouping of properties into categories, and of their data into files, is based on both principled and practical considerations, and it changes over time. For mechanical parsing of Unihan data, it should not be assumed that the data for a particular property is in a particular file. One approach to parsing data for certain properties is to concatenate all of the Unihan*.txt files together (or act as if they were) and extract the desired properties from the whole (for example, using grep). This avoids the need to track which file has a given property across Unicode versions, and therefore avoids the need to adjust parsing code.
Each file uses the same structure. Blank lines may be ignored. Lines beginning with # are comment lines used to provide the header and footer. Each of the remaining lines is one entry, with three, tab-separated fields: the Unicode Scalar Value, the property name, and the value for the property for the given Unicode Scalar Value. For most of the properties, if multiple values are possible, the values are separated by spaces. No ideograph may have more than one instance of a given property associated with it, and no empty properties are included in any of the files archived inside Unihan.zip.
There is no formal limit on the lengths of any of the property values. Any Unicode characters may be used in the property values except for double quotes and control characters (especially tab, newline, and carriage return). Most properties have a more restricted syntax, such as the kKangXi property which consists of multiple, space-separated entries, with each entry consisting of four digits 0 through 9, followed by a period, followed by three more digits.
The data lines are sorted by Unicode Scalar Value and property-type as primary and secondary keys, respectively.
Each file’s header includes a summary of the properties the file contains.
2.3 Web AccessThe Unihan Database Lookup page provides interactive web access to the contents of the Unihan database. For production reasons, the version available for interactive web access may not be immediately updated to the latest available version of the Unihan.zip file.
Links to Chinese and Japanese compound data are presented with this web front end, such as to the online CantoDict, CC-CEDICT, and Jim Breen’s WWJDIC projects. These additional data are not available in the other versions.
There are also two indices: a grid index grouping the ideographs in blocks of 256 and a radical-stroke index. A search page is also available. Individual ideographs can be accessed through the index or via the “Lookup” button and text field above. You enter the four- or five-digit hexadecimal identifier for the ideograph, and click “Lookup.” You will be taken to an information page for the ideograph. The “Use text, not images” check-box allows you to control whether UTF-8 text or embedded GIFs will be used in to display ideographs. The latter technique is less dependent on your browser and system support for Unicode but is much slower.
3 Property TypesThe data in the Unihan database serves a multitude of purposes, and the properties are most conveniently grouped into categories according to the purpose they fulfill. We provide here a general discussion of the various categories, followed by a detailed description of the individual properties, alphabetically arranged.
3.1 IRG SourcesAmong the few normative parts of the Unihan database, and the most exhaustively checked properties, are the IRG source properties: kIRG_GSource (China and Singapore), kIRG_HSource (Hong Kong SAR), kIRG_JSource (Japan), kIRG_KPSource (North Korea), kIRG_KSource (South Korea), kIRG_MSource (Macao SAR), kIRG_SSource (SAT Daizōkyō Text Database Committee), kIRG_TSource (TCA), kIRG_UKSource (UK), kIRG_USource (UTC), and kIRG_VSource (Vietnam).
These represent the official mappings between Unihan and the various encoded character sets or collections which have been submitted by IRG members. The versions of these standards may differ from the published versions generally available, particularly for PRC standards. This is because in the early days of Unicode, the PRC would occasionally add ideographs to their standards on an ad hoc basis in order to make sure they were included. The various procedures involved in submitting ideographs to the IRG for consideration no longer make this necessary.
The values for the U-source were, in the past, only references to the Unicode Standard itself and were always equal to the ideograph’s Unicode Scalar Value. This changed with the inclusion of Extension C in Version 5.2.0 of the Unicode Standard. The values now consist of indices as described in Unicode Standard Annex #45, “U-Source Ideographs” [UAX45].
The syntax for the values used in the various IRG source properties matches that found in ISO/IEC 10646:2020 [10646].
Detailed descriptions of the syntax used are to be found in Section 4.1, Alphabetical Listing, below.
Note that we do not include the IRG dictionary properties in this category, largely because they are not normative parts of the standard.
The kIICore property is also defined by the IRG and normative.
3.2 Other MappingsThe values for the properties in this category consist of mappings to the corresponding ideographs in encoded character sets or character collections not used by the IRG in its unification work, although some of the character sets covered do mirror official IRG sources. For example, data for mapping GB/T 12345 is included, even though GB/T 12345 is a part of the IRG’s G-source. The difference between the two is that the kGB1 property maps all of GB/T 12345 to Unicode, and not just that portion included in the G-source, and it doesn’t map any of the informal extensions to GB/T 12345.
3.3 Dictionary IndicesThere are three main reasons for providing indices into standard dictionaries.
First, standard dictionaries provide a “paper trail” for properties such as the English gloss (kDefinition) and the various pronunciations or readings, as well as variant data.
Second, standard dictionaries provide a reference for scholars or students who wish more information about an ideograph.
Third, standard dictionaries are a source for unencoded ideographs. This is particularly important for Cantonese, where the Cantonese lexicon is not standardized and has been neglected by the authors and architects of previous character set encodings other than HKSCS.
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. We have, nonetheless, retained its data for reference purposes. The property that is associated with the fourth dictionary, kIRGDaiKanwaZiten, was removed from the Unihan database.
The remaining dictionaries can be grouped into three categories: general-purpose Chinese (including classical Chinese), Cantonese, Japanese, and Korean.
We include in this category the pronunciations for a given ideograph in Mandarin, Cantonese, Tang-dynasty Chinese, Japanese, Sino-Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese. We also include here the English gloss for a given ideograph.
Any attempt at providing a reading or set of readings for an ideograph is bound to be fraught with difficulty, because the readings will vary over time and from place to place, even within a language. Mandarin is the official language of both the PRC and Taiwan (with some differences between the two) and is the primary language over much of northern and central China, with vast differences from place to place. Even Cantonese, the modern language covered by the Unihan database with the least geographical range, is spoken throughout Guangdong Province and in much of neighboring Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, and covers four large urban centers (Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Macao, and Hong Kong). There are therefore distinct regional variations in pronunciation and vocabulary.
Indeed, even the same speaker will pronounce the same word differently depending on the speaker or even the social context. This is particularly true for languages such as Cantonese, where there has been comparatively little government effort to standardize the language.
Add to this the fact that in none of these languages—the various forms of Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese—is the syllable the fundamental unit of the language. As in the West, it’s the word, and the pronunciation of an ideograph is tied to the word of which it is a part. In Chinese (followed by Vietnamese and Korean), the rule is one ideograph/one syllable, with most words written using multiple ideographs. In most cases, an ideograph has only one reading (or only one important reading), but there are numerous exceptions.
In Japanese, the situation is enormously more complex. Japanese has two pronunciation systems, one derived from Chinese (the on pronunciation, or Sino-Japanese), and the other from Japanese (the kun pronunciation).
The on readings derive from Chinese loan-words. They depend on factors such as when (and from which part of China) the loan-word was borrowed, and changes to Japanese since then. On readings can therefore have little obvious relationship to modern Chinese readings, and the same Chinese reading for a given kanji can be reflected in multiple on readings in Japanese. Contrary to Chinese practice, on readings may be polysyllabic.
Kun readings, on the other hand, derive from native Japanese words for which either existing kanji were adopted or new kanji coined.
The net result is that multiple readings are the rule for Japanese kanji. These multiple readings may bear no relationship to one another and are highly context-sensitive. Even a native Japanese reader may not know the correct pronunciation of a proper noun if it is written only in kanji.
Finally, some ideographs have rare pronunciations known only to a minority of native speakers, or are so rare themselves that few, if any, native speakers know how to pronounce them (for example, U+40DF 䃟, which is used in a few Hong Kong place names). In many cases, the pronunciations given by professional lexicographers are little more than educated guesses.
Thus, unlike mappings between Unicode and other character sets, providing definitive data on pronunciations or, similarly, providing a definitive English gloss is impossible, and not something which has been achieved. While we make every effort to use our sources judiciously, we are aware of the fact that this data can always be improved and extended. Users should not naïvely assume that learning to pronounce an East Asian language is all about learning to pronounce the individual ideographs, or that reading is done by parsing the ideographs, one at a time.
Despite these caveats, the reading and definition data is very useful both for the student attempting to learn these languages, and for the professional attempting to use them, and so the data is included in the Unihan database.
3.5 Dictionary-like DataThis category is something of a hodge-podge, consisting of various properties including information one might find in a dictionary (such as an ideograph’s cangjie input code), or data useful in determining levels of support (such as frequency), or structural analyses which can be helpful in lookup systems (such as the ideograph’s phonetic).
As with the readings and English gloss, this data does not cover as much of Unihan as is theoretically possible, although it does cover the bulk of what is used day-to-day.
3.6 Radical-Stroke CountsWe include two radical-stroke counts for Unihan: kRSAdobe_Japan1_6 and kRSUnicode.
All the radical-stroke properties are based on the radical system introduced by the 18th-century Kangxi Dictionary (康熙字典 Kāngxī Zìdiǎn). Each ideograph is assigned one of 214 radicals. In most cases, the radical assigned is the natural radical, giving a clue as to the ideograph’s meaning; in the rest, the radical is arbitrary, based on the ideograph’s structure. One also counts the ideograph’s residual strokes, that is, the number of brush strokes required to write everything in the ideograph except the radical.
To find an ideograph using the radical-stroke system, one determines its radical and the number of residual strokes, then looks through the list of ideographs with those characteristics. This is a clumsy system compared to alphabetical lookup, but is one of the most widespread systems throughout East Asia. Unfortunately, it is also ambiguous.
First of all, if an ideograph does not have a natural radical, it can sometimes be hard to tell what the radical ought to be. For example, U+4E95 井 being arbitrarily assigned Radical 7 (二). Even if the ideograph naturally falls into radical-like pieces, it can be hard to tell which is the radical and which is the phonetic. For example, U+548C 和, which looks like it belongs to Radical 115 (禾), actually belongs to Radical 30 (口). Moreover, since Unicode encodes characters, not glyphs, two different glyphs for the same ideograph may have different residual strokes (such as U+8005 者, which can be written either with or without a dot, altering its stroke count between nine and eight, respectively).
The primary use for the kRSUnicode property is to cover the normative radical-stroke value defined by [10646]. However, it is also used for cases where there is sufficient ambiguity that a reasonable person might look for an ideograph in multiple places, particularly where one of our source dictionaries categorizes an ideograph under a different radical or with a different stroke count.
The kRSUnicode property also uses apostrophes after the radical number to indicate that the ideograph uses a standard simplification. A single apostrophe indicates the Chinese simplified form of the radical (for example, U+9F99 龙 for U+9F8D 龍), two apostrophes indicate a non-Chinese simplified form of the radical (for example, U+7ADC 竜 for U+9F8D 龍), and three apostrophes indicate a second non-Chinese simplified form of the radical (for example, U+31DE5 𱷥 for U+9F8D 龍).
There is, by the way, no standard way of ordering ideographs within a given radical-stroke group. The Unicode Standard’s radical-stroke indexes order ideographs with the same radical-stroke count by the Unicode block in which they occur. If looking for an ideograph with Radical 64 (手) and ten residual strokes, one knows that of the hundreds of candidates in the Unicode Standard, the most common ones come towards the head of the list and the less common ones later.
The IRG is in the process of adopting a common system of assigning the first stroke of the phonetic element, more commonly referred to as the “first residual stroke,” to one of five categories, and sorting by those categories. This data is now required for all IRG submissions; see Section 2.4 of Unicode Standard Annex #45, “U-Source Ideographs” [UAX45]. When this data is available for all of Unihan, it will be added to the Unihan database as a new property, and will simplify the process of finding an ideograph within a particular radical-stroke block.
3.7 VariantsAlthough Unicode encodes characters and not glyphs, the line between the two can sometimes be hard to draw, particularly in East Asia. There, thousands of years worth of writing have produced thousands of pairs which can be used more-or-less interchangeably.
To deal with this situation, the Unicode Standard has adopted a three-dimensional model for determining the relationship between ideographs, and has formal rules for when two forms may be unified, which includes the now-abolished Source Separation Rule. Both are described in some detail in the Unicode Standard. Briefly, however, the three-dimensional model uses the x-axis to represent meaning, the y-axis to represent abstract shape, and the z-axis for stylistic variations.
To illustrate, U+8AAA 說 and U+8C93 貓 have different positions along the x-axis, because they mean two entirely different things (to speak and cat, respectively). U+8C93 貓 and U+732B 猫 mean the same thing and are pronounced the same way, but have different abstract shapes, so they have the same position on the x-axis (semantics), but different positions on the y-axis (abstract shape). They are said to be y-variants of one another. On the other hand, U+8AAA 說 and U+8AAC 説 have the same meaning and pronunciation, and the same abstract shape, and so have the same positions on both the x- and y-axes, but different positions on the z-axis. They are z-variants of one another.
Ideally, there would be no pairs of z-variants in the Unicode Standard; however, the need to provide for round-trip compatibility with earlier standards, and some out-and-out mistakes along the way, mean that there are some. These are marked using the kZVariant property.
The remaining variant properties are used to mark different types of y-variation.
3.7.1 Simplified and Traditional Chinese VariantsThe kTraditionalVariant and kSimplifiedVariant properties are used in character-by-character conversions between simplified and traditional Chinese (abbreviated as SC and TC, respectively). For any ideograph X, when converting between SC and TC, there are four possible cases:
U+4E95 井. This is the most common case, and is indicated by both the kSimplifiedVariant and kTraditionalVariant properties being empty.U+66F8 書 whose kSimplifiedVariant property is U+4E66 书.U+5B66 学 whose kTraditionalVariant property is U+5B78 學.U+540E 后, which is the simplification for itself and for U+5F8C 後. When mapping TC to SC, it is left alone, but when mapping SC to TC it may or may not be changed, depending on context. In this case, both kTraditionalVariant and kSimplifiedVariant properties are defined and X is included among the values for both.U+82E7 苧. In traditional Chinese, it is pronounced zhù and refers to a kind of nettle. In simplified Chinese, it is pronounced níng and means limonene (a chemical found in the rinds of lemons and other citrus fruits). When converting TC to SC it is mapped to U+82CE 苎, and when converting SC to TC it is mapped to U+85B4 薴. In this case, both kTraditionalVariant and kSimplifiedVariant properties are defined but X is not included in the values for either.In practice, conversion between simplified and traditional Chinese is complicated by several factors:
U+810F 脏 is mapped to U+81DF 臟 when it means “viscera” and to U+9AD2 髒 when it means “dirty.”U+4E3A 为 versus U+70BA 為 (HK, TW) / U+7232 爲 (CN); and 2) when the traditional variant that is common in TW/HK diverges, whereby the preferred HK traditional variant is identical to the official traditional variant as defined by CN standards, such as U+8BF4 说 versus U+8AAC 説 (HK, CN) / U+8AAA 說 (TW).U+732B 猫 and U+8C93 貓 are acceptable TC ideographs meaning “cat,” but only U+732B 猫 should be used in SC.Two variation properties, kSemanticVariant and kSpecializedSemanticVariant, are used to mark cases where two ideographs have identical and overlapping meanings, respectively.
Thus U+514E 兎 and U+5154 兔 are y-variants of one another; both mean rabbit. U+4E3C 丼 and U+4E95 井 are not pure y-variants of one another. U+4E95 井 means a well, and although U+4E3C 丼 can also mean a well and be used for U+4E95 井, it can also mean a bowl of food. We use kSemanticVariant, then, for the former pair, and kSpecializedSemanticVariant for the latter. In many cases, data is provided listing the Unihan sources which indicate the variant relationship. The syntax is described in detail below, but as an example, U+792E 礮 has the kSemanticVariant value U+70AE<kMeyerWempe U+7832<kLau,kMatthews,kMeyerWempe U+791F<kLau,kMatthews. This means that the Mathews, Lau, and Meyer-Wempe dictionaries all say that it is a y-variant of U+7832 砲, whereas only Mathews and Lau identify it as a variant of U+791F 礟 and only Meyer-Wempe identifies it as a variant of U+70AE 炮.
The kSpoofingVariant property is used to denote a special class of variant, a spoofing variant. Spoofing variants are potentially used in bad faith to direct users to unexpected URLs, evade email filters, or otherwise deceive end-users. Determining whether or not two ideographs are spoofing variants is based entirely on the glyph shape, without regard for semantics. Etymologically unrelated pairs such as U+571F 土 and U+58EB 士 or U+672A 未 and U+672B 末 are considered spoofing variants. A common source of spoofing variants is deliberate confusion between Radicals 74 (⽉) and 130 (⾁). These two radicals, when used in Han ideographs, look very similar or identical (for example, in U+3B35 㬵 and U+80F6 胶). Similarly, even if the visual appearance of two radicals is distinct, they may be similar enough that a user might overlook the distinction (for example, ⼎ and ⺡), especially in a spoofing context such as https://凊水.org/ versus https://清水.org/. Spoofing variants also include instances where two highly similar shapes are separately encoded because of source code separation, without regard to other considerations. Cases include the following pairs: U+672C 本 and U+5932 夲; U+520A 刊 and U+520B 刋.
Some spoofing variants might be sufficiently dissimilar in shape that they can be distinguished at large point sizes. Others are dissimilar in meaning so that they can be distinguished in running text. They might also be visually distinct in one font but not another, due to the language or region that the font supports. These considerations are irrelevant to their status; even dissimilar pairs can be used to misdirect users (particularly when URLs are displayed at small point sizes).
Because z-variant pairs are, by definition, either identical or unifiable, they should all be considered spoofing variants as well. The same is true of compatibility variants. Because of these considerations, the kSpoofingVariant property only includes spoofing variants which are not also z-variants or compatibility variants.
The kSpoofingVariant property is symmetric (if A is a spoofing variant of B, then B is a spoofing variant of A) and transitive (if A is a spoofing variant of B and B is a spoofing variant of C, then A is a spoofing variant of C).
The kSpoofingVariant property only covers ideographs in the CJK Unified Ideographs blocks. Other CJK-related spoofing data is found in the EquivalentUnifiedIdeographs.txt file in the [UCD].
There are six properties—kAccountingNumeric, kOtherNumeric, kPrimaryNumeric, kTayNumeric, kVietnameseNumeric, and kZhuangNumeric—that indicate the numerical values an ideograph may have. Traditionally, ideographs were used both for numbers and words, and so many ideographs have (or can have) numeric values. The various kinds of numeric values are specified by these six properties.
3.9 Source ReferencesA number of properties in the Unihan database indicate the source from which the data is taken. As noted above, this includes but is not limited to the kSemanticVariant and kSpecializedSemanticVariant properties.
These source references are of two kinds:
s (for “source”) followed by a series of ASCII letters, numerals, and underscores. The overall syntax, except for the first letter, is the same as property identifiers used by the Unihan database.Indices to or data from some of these additional sources may at some future point be added to the Unihan database as a new property. In that case, the initial s will be changed to a k.
A complete list of these additional sources with bibliographic information is found in Section 4.5 below.
3.10 IRG Source SpecifiersA number of properties in the Unihan database indicate IRG sources with which the data is associated. This includes but is not limited to the kAlternateTotalStrokes, kIICore, and kUnihanCore2020 properties.
These sources references consist of a series of one-letter identifiers. These letters match the full IRG source designations (for example, “H” refers to kIRG_HSource), except that “B” is used instead of “UK” and “P” instead of “KP.” The order of the letters within the source reference is not specified.
4 The PropertiesWe now give two listings of the properties in the Unihan database. The first is an alphabetical listing, with information on the property contents and syntax. The second is a listing of the properties by the version of the Unicode Standard in which they were first introduced.
4.1 Alphabetical ListingFor each property we give the following information in the alphabetical listing: its Property tag, its Unicode Status, its Category as defined above, the Unicode version in which it was Introduced, its Delimiter, its Syntax, and its Description.
The Property name is the tag used in the Unihan database to mark instances of this property.
The Unicode Status is either Normative, Informative, or Provisional, depending on whether it is a normative part of the standard, an informative part of the standard, or neither. We may also include Deprecated as a Unicode Status if the property is no longer to be used.
Properties which allow multiple property values have a Delimiter defined as “space” (U+0020 SPACE). Properties which do not have multiple property values (such as the IRG source properties) have this defined as “N/A.” Some properties do not currently have multiple values in the data but may do so in the future.
For most properties with multiple values, the order of the values is arbitrary and has no particular significance. The most common order in such cases is alphabetical. For example, see the kStrange property.
However, for certain properties the ordering of values may be significant; in such cases, the significance is specified in the Description for the property. For example, see the kMandarin property. In later versions of the [UCD], a property may change from arbitrary order to a specified order.
Validation is done as follows: The entry is split into subentries using the Delimiter (if defined), and each subentry converted to Normalization Form D (NFD). The value is valid if and only if each normalized subentry matches the property’s Syntax regular expression. Note that any given property’s Syntax is not guaranteed to be stable and may change in the future.
Finally, the Description contains not only a description of what the property contains, but also source information, known limitations, methodology used in deriving the data, and so on.
The properties covered in the table are: kAccountingNumeric, kAlternateTotalStrokes, kBigFive, kCangjie, kCantonese, kCCCII, kCheungBauer, kCheungBauerIndex, kCihaiT, kCNS1986, kCNS1992, kCompatibilityVariant, kCowles, kDaeJaweon, kDefinition, kEACC, kFanqie, kFenn, kFennIndex, kFourCornerCode, kGB0, kGB1, kGB3, kGB5, kGB8, kGradeLevel, kGSR, kHangul, kHanYu, kHanyuPinlu, kHanyuPinyin, kHDZRadBreak, kHKGlyph, kIBMJapan, kIICore, kIRG_GSource, kIRG_HSource, kIRG_JSource, kIRG_KPSource, kIRG_KSource, kIRG_MSource, kIRG_SSource, kIRG_TSource, kIRG_UKSource, kIRG_USource, kIRG_VSource, kIRGDaeJaweon, kIRGHanyuDaZidian, kIRGKangXi, kJapanese, kJapaneseKun, kJapaneseOn, kJinmeiyoKanji, kJis0, kJis1, kJIS0213, kJoyoKanji, kKangXi, kKarlgren, kKorean, kKoreanEducationHanja, kKoreanName, kLau, kMainlandTelegraph, kMandarin, kMatthews, kMeyerWempe, kMojiJoho, kMorohashi, kNelson, kOtherNumeric, kPhonetic, kPrimaryNumeric, kPseudoGB1, kRSAdobe_Japan1_6, kRSUnicode, kSBGY, kSemanticVariant, kSimplifiedVariant, kSMSZD2003Index, kSMSZD2003Readings, kSpecializedSemanticVariant, kSpoofingVariant, kStrange, kTaiwanTelegraph, kTang, kTayNumeric, kTGH, kTGHZ2013, kTotalStrokes, kTraditionalVariant, kUnihanCore2020, kVietnamese, kVietnameseNumeric, kXerox, kXHC1983, kZhuang, kZhuangNumeric, and kZVariant.
Property kAccountingNumeric Status Informative Category Numeric Values Introduced 3.2 Delimiter N/A Syntax \d+ Description The value of the ideograph when used as an accounting numeral to prevent fraud in Chinese and derivative numeric systems. A numeral such as 十 (ten) is easily transformed into 千 (thousand) by adding a single stroke, so monetary documents often use an accounting form of the numeral, such as 拾 (ten), instead of the more common—and simpler—form. Ideographs with this property will have a single, well-defined value, which a native reader can reasonably be expected to understand.The three Chinese numeric-value properties should have no overlap; that is, ideographs with a kAccountingNumeric value should not have a kOtherNumeric or kPrimaryNumeric value as well.
U+002D - HYPHEN-MINUS).
The IRG source specifier indicates the IRG sources for which a particular value is preferred.
The stroke count value is the one for the representative glyph as shown in the code charts.
Multiple stroke counts are listed in increasing numeric order. Stroke counts may not be repeated.
The IRG sources sharing the kTotalStrokes value should not be explicitly listed. If all IRG sources share the kTotalStrokes value, then the value of “-” is used. The kAlternateTotalStrokes value for U+4E95 井 is therefore “-” instead of “4:GHJKPTV.”
For IRG sources which do not include a source reference, the kAlternateTotalStrokes property should not have a corresponding value.
Unlike the kTotalStrokes property, the data in this property is not to be taken as exhaustive. Where it is defined for an ideograph, however, it includes explicit or implicit values for all IRG sources containing the deograph.
U+0027 ' APOSTROPHE) at the end of the property value indicates an alternate Big Five mapping for two ideographs that map differently in CNS 11643, specifically U+5284 劄 (Big Five) versus U+7B9A 箚 (CNS 11643) and U+5F5D 彝 (Big Five) versus U+5F5E 彞 (CNS 11643).
cangjie-table.b5 by Christian Wittern.
This property is targeted specifically for use by CLDR collation and transliteration. As such, it is subject to considerations that help keep jyutping-based Han collation (and its tailorings) and transliteration reasonably stable. The values may not in all cases track the preferred reading in some dictionaries.
Among the sources used for Cantonese data are the following:
Casey, G. Hugh, S.J. Ten Thousand Characters: An Analytic Dictionary. Hong Kong: Kelley and Walsh, 1980. (kPhonetic)
Cheung Kwan-hin, and Robert S. Bauer, The Representation of Cantonese with Chinese Characters, Journal of Chinese Linguistics Monograph Series Number 18, 2002. ISSN 0091-3723 (kCheungBauer, kCheungBauerIndex)
Cowles, Roy T. A Pocket Dictionary of Cantonese. Hong Kong: University Press, 1999. ISBN 962-209-122-9 (kCowles)
Jiu Bingcoi 饒秉才, ed. Guangzhou Yin Zidian / Gwongzau Jam Zidin 廣州音字典 (Guangzhou Pronouncing Character Dictionary). Hong Kong: Joint Publishing (H.K.) Co., Ltd, 1989. ISBN 962-04-0389-4
Langwen Chuji Zhongwen Cidian / Longman Cokap Zungman Cidin 朗文初級中文詞典 (Longman’s Elementary Chinese Dictionary). Hong Kong: Longman, 2001. ISBN 962-00-5148-3
Lau, Sidney. A Practical Cantonese-English Dictionary. Hong Kong: Government Printer, 1977 (kLau).
Meyer, Bernard F., and Theodore F. Wempe. Student’s Cantonese-English Dictionary. Maryknoll, New York: Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America, 1947 (kMeyerWempe).
Wong Gongsang 黃港生, ed. Shangwu Xin Cidian / Soengmou San Cidin 商務新詞典 (New Commercial Press Dictionary). Hong Kong: 商務印書館(香港)有限公司 (Commercial Press [Hong Kong], Ltd.), 1991. ISBN 962-07-0133-X
Wong Gongsang 黃港生, ed. Shangwu Xin Zidian / Soengmou San Zidin 商務新字典 (New Commercial Press Character Dictionary). Hong Kong: 商務印書館(香港)有限公司 (Commercial Press [Hong Kong], Ltd.), 2003. ISBN 962-07-0140-2 (kSMSZD2003Index and kSMSZD2003Readings)
Zhonghua Xin Zidian / Zungwaa San Zidin 中華新字典 (New Chung Hwa Character Dictionary). Hong Kong: 中華書局 (Chung Hwa Book Co.), 2003. ISBN 962-231-001-X
Earlier versions of CCCII served as the basis for ANSI/NISO Z39.64-1989 (see kEACC), so many values are common to the two properties.
The position is indicated by a decimal number. The digits to the left of the decimal are the page number. The first digit after the decimal is the row on the page, and the remaining two digits after the decimal are the position on the row.
UnicodeData.txt in the [UCD]. This property is derived by taking the non-null Decomposition_Mapping values from Field 5 of UnicodeData.txt, for ideographs contained within the CJK Compatibility Ideographs block and the CJK Compatibility Ideographs Supplement block.
The Cowles indices are numerical, usually integers but occasionally fractional where an ideograph was added after the original indices were determined. Cowles is missing indices 1222 and 4949, and four ideographs in Cowles are part of Unicode’s “Hangzhou” numeral set: 2964 (U+3025), 3197 (U+3028), 3574 (U+3023), and 4720 (U+3027).
Thus, “1187.060” indicates the sixth ideograph on page 1187. An ideograph not in this dictionary but assigned a position between the 6th and 7th ideographs on page 1187 for sorting purposes would have the code “1187.061”
The edition used is the first edition, published in Seoul by Samseong Publishing Co., Ltd. (三省出版社 삼성출판사), 1988.
Definitions specific to non-Chinese languages or Chinese dialects other than modern Mandarin are marked, for example, (Cant.) or (J).
Major definitions are separated by semicolons, and minor definitions by commas. However, semicolons and commas may also occur anywhere within major definitions and minor definitions, meaning that the text cannot be parsed into separate definitions using those punctuation characters. Any valid Unicode character (except for tab, double-quote, and any line break character) may be used within the kDefinition property.
The kEACC property was originally derived from data supplied and proofed by the Research Libraries Group. It has since been extended and corrected with mapping data supplied by the Library of Congress.
U+6771 東 is the ideograph pair 德紅. The method uses a third and final ideograph, which can be either 反 or 切 (the two ideographs that correspond to Fanqie), and is therefore not included as part of the kFanqie property value.
Much of the property data is based on the dictionary that serves as the basis of the kSBGY property, but the scope of this property is not limited to that particular dictionary.
The data here consists of a decimal number followed by a letter A through K, the letter P, or an asterisk. The decimal number gives the Soothill number for the ideograph’s phonetic, and the letter is a rough frequency indication, with A indicating the 500 most common ideographs, B the next five hundred, and so on.
P is used by Fenn to indicate a rare ideograph included in the dictionary only because it is the phonetic element in other ideographs.
An asterisk is used instead of a letter in the final position to indicate an ideograph which belongs to one of Soothill’s phonetic groups but is not found in Fenn’s dictionary.
Ideographs which have a frequency letter but no Soothill phonetic group are assigned group 0.
The four-corner system assigns each ideograph a four-digit code from 0 through 9. The digit is derived from the “shape” of the four corners of the ideograph (upper-left, upper-right, lower-left, lower-right). An optional fifth digit can be used to further distinguish ideographs; the fifth digit is derived from the shape in the region immediately above the fourth corner.
The four-corner system is now used only rarely for IMEs. It continues to be used, however, primarily for indexing and lookup in, for example, academic studies and reference material, especially in some Chinese dictionaries.
Values in this property consist of four decimal digits, optionally followed by a period and fifth digit for a five-digit form.
This dataset contains a total of 7,405 records. References are given in the form DDDDa('), where “DDDD” is a set number in the range [0001..1260] zero-padded to four digits, “a” is a letter in the range [a..z] (excluding “w”), optionally followed by apostrophe (U+0027 ' APOSTROPHE). The data from which this mapping table is extracted contains a total of 10,023 references. References to inscriptional forms have been omitted.
• Release notes:
Changes since the initial release:
22-Dec-2003: Initial release. The following 32 references are to unencoded forms: 0059k, 0069y, 0079d, 0275b, 0286a, 0289a, 0289f, 0293a, 0325a, 0389o, 0391h, 0392s, 0468h, 0480a, 0516a, 0526o, 0566g', 0642y, 0661a, 0739i, 0775b, 0837h, 0893r, 0969a, 0969e, 1019e, 1062b, 1112d, 1124l, 1129c', 1144a, 1144b. In some cases, a variant mapping has been substituted in the mapping table, in other cases the reference is omitted.
• Bibliographic information:
Karlgren, Klas Bernhard Johannes 高本漢 (1889–1978): 2000. Grammata Serica Recensa Electronica. Electronic version of GSR, including indices, syllable canon, and images of the original Karlgren (1957) text. Prepared for the STEDT Project by Richard Cook; based in part on work by Tor Ulving and Ferenc Tafferner (see below), used by permission. Berkeley: University of California.
Karlgren 1957. Grammata Serica Recensa. First published in the Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities (BMFEA) No. 29, Stockholm, Sweden. Reprinted by Elanders Boktrycker Aktiebolag, Kungsbacka, [1972]. Reprinted also by SMC Publishing Inc., Taipei, Taiwan, ROC, [1996]. ISBN: 957-638-269-6.
Karlgren 1940. Grammata Serica: Script and Phonetics in Chinese and Sino-Japanese 《中日漢字形聲論》Zhong-Ri Hanzi Xingsheng Lun [A study of Sino-Japanese semantic-phonetic compound characters:] BMFEA No. 12. Reprinted, Taipei: Ch’eng-Wen Publishing Company, [1966].
Ulving, Tor: 1997. Dictionary of Old and Middle Chinese: Bernhard Karlgren’s Grammata Serica Recensa Alphabetically Arranged. With Ferenc Tafferner. Göteborg, Sweden: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis. Orientalia Gothoburgensia, 11. ISBN: 91-7346-294-2.
A value of 0 corresponds to KS X 1001, a value of 1 corresponds to KS X 1002, a value of E corresponds to 한문 교육용 기초 한자 (漢文敎育用基礎漢字), and a value of N corresponds to 인명용 한자 (人名用漢字). A value of X indicates that a K-source was formerly at that code point but was later removed.
The ideograph references are given in the form “ABCDE.XYZ”, in which: “A” is the volume number [1..8]; “BCDE” is the zero-padded page number [0001..4809]; “XY” is the zero-padded number of the ideograph on the page [01..32]; “Z” is “0” for an ideograph actually in the dictionary, and greater than 0 for an ideograph assigned a “virtual” position in the dictionary. For example, 53024.060 indicates an actual HDZ ideograph, the 6th ideograph on Page 3,024 of Volume 5 (i.e. 籉 [U+7C49]). Note that the Volume 8 “BCDE” references are in the range [0008..0044] inclusive, referring to the pagination of the “Appendix of Addendum” at the end of that volume (beginning after p. 5746).
The first ideograph assigned a given virtual position has an index ending in 1; the second assigned the same virtual position has an index ending in 2; and so on.
-- Release information --
This data set contains a total of 56098 HDZ references, 54729 of which are actual HDZ ideograph references (positions are given for all HDZ head entries, including source-internal unifications), and 1369 of which are virtual ideograph positions (see note below).
A total of 55,818 distinct Han ideographs are assigned mappings in this data. Because of IRG source-internal unifications, a given ideograph may have more than one HDZ reference. Source-internal unifications are of two types: (1) unifications of graphical variants; (2) unifications of duplicate head entries.
The proofing of all references was done primarily on the basis of cross-checks of three versions of the reference data: (1) the original print source; (2) the kIRGHanyuDaZidian property of the Unihan database (release 3.1.1d1); (3) “HDZ.txt”, originally produced and proofed for Academia Sinica’s Institute of Information Technology (Document Processing Laboratory). In addition, the data was checked against the kHanYu and kAlternateHanYu properties of the Unihan database (release 3.1.1d1), which the present data set supersedes.
String value, string length, compound key, field count, and page total validations were all performed. Altogether, 578 omissions/ errors in source (2) were identified/corrected. Any remaining errors will likely relate to virtual positions, or to the ordering of actual ideographs within a given page. It is unlikely that errors across page breaks remain. Possible future disunifications of source-internal unifications will necessitate update of the Unicode Scalar Value for some references. Under no circumstances should the source-internal unification (duplicate Unicode Scalar Value) mappings be removed from this data set.
Note: Source (3) contributed only actual HDZ ideograph references to the proofing process, while source (2) contributed all virtual positions. It seems that the compilers of source (2) usually assigned virtual positions based on stroke count, though occasionally the virtual position brings the virtual ideograph together with the actual HDZ ideograph of which it is a variant, without regard to actual stroke count.
-- Bibliographic information for the print source --
<Hanyu Da Zidian> [‘Great Chinese Character Dictionary’ (in 8 Volumes)]. XU Zhongshu (Editor in Chief). Wuhan, Hubei Province (PRC): Hubei and Sichuan Dictionary Publishing Collectives, 1986-1990. ISBN: 7-5403-0030-2/H.16.
《漢語大字典》。許力以主任，徐中舒主編，（漢語大字典工作委員會）。武漢：四川辭書出版社，湖北辭書出版社,1986-1990. ISBN: 7-5403-0030-2/H.16.
Note that the property name is kHanYu instead of kHanyu to maintain compatibility with earlier versions of this file, where it was inappropriately spelled with an uppercase Y.
Data Format
This dataset contains a total of 3799 records. (The original data provided to Unihan on 2003-02-04 contained a total of 3800 records, including U+3007 〇 IDEOGRAPHIC NUMBER ZERO, not included in the Unihan database since it is not a CJK Unified Ideograph.)
Each entry is comprised of two pieces of data.
The Hanyu Pinyin (HYPY) pronunciation(s) of the ideograph.
Immediately following the pronunciation, a numeric string appears in parentheses: for example, in “ā(392)” the numeric string “392” indicates the sum total of the frequencies of the pronunciations of the ideograph as given in HYPLCD.
Where more than one pronunciation exists, these are sorted by descending frequency, and the list elements are “space” delimited.
Release Information
The XDHYPLCD data here for Modern Standard Chinese (Putonghua) cuts across 4 genres (“News,” “Scientific,” “Colloquial,” and “Literature”), and was derived from a 1,807,389 ideograph corpus. See that text for additional information.
The 8548 entries (8586 with variant writings) from p. 491–656 of XDHYPLCD were input by hand and proof-read from 1994-08-04 to 1995-03-22 by Richard Cook.
Current Release Date above reflects date of last proofing.
HYPY transcription for the data in this release was semiautomated and hand-corrected in 1995, based in part on data provided by Ross Paterson (Department of Computing, Imperial College, London).
Tom Bishop is also due thanks for early assistance in proof-reading this data.
The character set used for this digitization of HYPLCD (a “simplified” mainland PRC text) was (Mac OS 7-9) GB/T 2312-1980 (plus 嗐).
These data were converted to Big5 (plus 腈), and both GB and Big5 versions were separately converted to Unicode 4.0, and then merged, resulting in the 3800 records in the original release. Frequency data for simplified polysyllabic words has been employed to generate both simplified and traditional ideograph frequencies.
Bibliographic information for the primary print source
《現代漢語頻率詞典》，北京語言學院語言教學研究所編著。
<Xiandai Hanyu Pinlu Cidian> = XDHYPLCD First edition 1986/6, 2nd printing 1990/4. ISBN 7-5619-0094-5/H.67.
| U+34CE | 㓎 | 10297.260: qīn,qìn,qǐn | | U+34D8 | 㓘 | 10278.080,10278.090: sù | | U+5364 | 卤 | 10093.130: xī,lǔ 74609.020: lǔ,xī | | U+5EFE | 廾 | 10513.110,10514.010,10514.020: gǒng |
U+5364 卤 is “10093.130: xī,lǔ 74609.020: lǔ,xī.” This means that U+5364 卤 is found in kHanYu at entries 10093.130 and 74609.020. The former entry has the two pīnyīn readings xī and lǔ (in that order), whereas the latter entry has the readings lǔ and xī (reversing the order).
This data was originally input by 井作恆 Jǐng Zuòhéng, proofed by 聃媽歌 Dān Māgē (Magda Danish, using software donated by 文林 Wénlín Institute, Inc. and tables prepared by 曲理查 Qū Lǐchá), and proofed again and prepared for the Unicode Consortium by 曲理查 Qū Lǐchá (2008-01-14).
-- Release Notes --
Each value consists of a letter (A, B, or C), indicating priority value, followed by an IRG source specifier as defined in Section 3.10 above.
Thus, “1187.060” indicates the sixth ideograph on page 1187. An ideograph not in this dictionary but assigned a position between the 6th and 7th ideographs on page 1187 for sorting purposes would have the code “1187.061”
This property represents the official position of the ideograph within the Dae Jaweon dictionary as used by the IRG in the four-dictionary sorting algorithm.
The edition used is the first edition, published in Seoul by Samseong Publishing Co., Ltd. (三省出版社 삼성출판사), 1988.
Thus, “32264.080” indicates the eighth ideograph on page 2264 in volume 3. An ideograph not in this dictionary but assigned a position between the 8th and 9th ideographs on this page for sorting purposes would have the code “32264.081”
This property represents the official position of the ideograph within the Hànyǔ Dà Zìdiǎn dictionary as used by the IRG in the four-dictionary sorting algorithm.
The edition of the Hanyu Da Zidian used is the first edition, published in Chengdu by Sichuan Cishu Publishing, 1986.
Thus, “1187.060” indicates the sixth ideograph on page 1187. An ideograph not in this dictionary but assigned a position between the 6th and 7th ideographs on page 1187 for sorting purposes would have the code “1187.061”.
The edition of the Kangxi Dictionary used is the 7th edition published by Zhonghua Bookstore in Beijing, 1989.
The values in the kIRGKangXi property are a strict subset of those in the kKangXi property.
G0 GB/T 2312-1980 (formerly GB 2312-80)
H Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set – 2008
J0 JIS X 0208-1990
KP0 KPS 9566-97
It is currently not possible to communicate with standards bodies within the DPRK. There may, therefore, be erroneous data in the values for this property.
Please refer to Unicode Technical Note #50, “KP-Source Property Value History” [UTN50], for the complete history of changes that have been made to this property.
K0 KS X 1001:2004 (formerly KS C 5601-1987)
Note that the K4 and K5 sources are expressed in hexadecimal, but unlike the K0 through K3 sources, they are not organized in row/column format. Also note that the KC source is expressed as a zero-padded five-digit decimal value.
MA HKSCS-2008 code point in hexadecimal
SAT Taishō Shinshū Daizōkyō (大正新脩大藏經), 1924-1934, which is accessible in the SAT Daizōkyō Text Database
T1 TCA-CNS 11643-1986 1st plane
CNS 11643-1992 (p. 319) lists the following reference works:
V0 TCVN 5773:1993
The Moji Jōhō Kiban database and its Japanese readings are owned by CITPC (Character Information Technology Promotion Council 文字情報技術促進協議会), and are used under license.
Published by Japan’s Ministry of Justice (法務省) in 2010 and amended in 2015 and 2017 with one additional ideograph during each year, the Jinmei-yō Kanji table (人名用漢字表) includes 863 ideographs for use in personal names in Japan.
The version year is either 2010 (861 ideographs), 2015 (one ideograph), or 2017 (one ideograph), and 230 ideographs are variants for which the code point of the standard Japanese form is specified.
Published by Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs (文化庁) in 2010, the Jōyō Kanji table (常用漢字表) includes 2,136 ideographs for common use in Japan.
The current version year is 2010, and there are only four ideographs that are considered JIS X 0208 variants of JIS X 0213 ideographs.
Thus, “1187.060” indicates the sixth ideograph on page 1187. An ideograph not in this dictionary but assigned a position between the 6th and 7th ideographs on page 1187 for sorting purposes would have the code “1187.061”.
The edition of the Kangxi Dictionary used is the 7th edition published by Zhonghua Bookstore in Beijing, 1989.
The values in the kKangXi property are a strict superset of those in the kIRGKangXi property.
If the index is followed by an asterisk (*), then the index is an interpolated one, indicating where the ideograph would be found if it were to have been included in the dictionary. Note that while the index itself is usually an integer, there are some cases where it is an integer followed by an “A.”
Use of the kKorean property is not recommended. The kHangul property, which is aligned to the KS X 1001 and KS X 1002 standards, 한문 교육용 기초 한자 (漢文敎育用基礎漢字), and 인명용 한자 (人名用漢字), is recommended to be used instead.
This property corresponds to an 1,800-ideograph subset for educational purposes.
The current version year is 2007.
The Supreme Court of Korea publishes this table of ideographs. Since all 1,800 kKoreanEducationHanja ideographs are automatically included in the kKoreanName ideographs, the kKoreanName property is not shown for the 1,800 kKoreanEducationHanja ideographs.
The current version years are 2015 and 2018. Note that 40 ideographs were added to this table in 2022, and that 1,070 were added in 2024, but we do not have the data for updating this property accordingly.
The index consists of an integer. Missing indices indicate ideographs to be found in Unicode Standard Annex #45, “U-Source Ideographs” [UAX45].
This property is targeted specifically for use by CLDR collation and transliteration. As such, it is subject to considerations that help keep pīnyīn-based Han collation (and its tailorings) and transliteration reasonably stable. The values may not in all cases track the preferred use in some dictionaries.
Note that the property name is kMatthews instead of kMathews to maintain compatibility with earlier versions of this file, where it was inadvertently misspelled.
U+50E5 僥, which is listed as 736* as well as 1185a.
If a colon (:) and VS (Variation Selector) follow a Moji Jōhō Kiban database serial number, the sequence of the CJK Unified Ideograph, serving as a BC, followed by the VS, corresponds to the Moji Jōhō Kiban database serial number. Such sequences are SVSes or Moji_Joho IVSes.
If a Moji Jōhō Kiban database serial number appears both by itself and followed by a colon and VS, the registered Moji_Joho IVS that corresponds to the latter is considered the default (that is, encoded) form.
The Moji Jōhō Kiban database and its mappings are owned by CITPC (Character Information Technology Promotion Council 文字情報技術促進協議会), and are used under license.
Index numbers are five zero-padded integer values with an optional single apostrophe (U+0027 ' APOSTROPHE) or double apostrophe ('') suffix that corresponds in appearance to a prime or double prime. Index numbers that appear in the supplemental volume (補巻) are prefixed with “H” and consist of three zero-padded integer values.
If a colon (:) and VS (Variation Selector) follow an index number, the sequence of the CJK Unified Ideograph, serving as a BC (Base Character), followed by the VS, corresponds to the index number. Such sequences are SVSes or Moji_Joho IVSes.
If an index number appears both by itself and followed by a colon and VS, the registered Moji_Joho IVS that corresponds to the latter is considered the default (that is, encoded) form of the CJK Unified Ideograph.
The Moji Jōhō Kiban database and its mappings are owned by CITPC (Character Information Technology Promotion Council 文字情報技術促進協議会), and are used under license.
The three Chinese numeric-value properties should have no overlap; that is, ideographs with a kOtherNumeric value should not have a kAccountingNumeric or kPrimaryNumeric value as well.
Ideographs in the same phonetic class have a common phonetic element, such as U+8015 耕 and U+9631 阱, both assigned to the phonetic class 103. Most classes have a prototype ideograph, which serves as the common phonetic element for the remaining members of the class. For example, U+4E4D 乍 is the prototype for ideographs of class 10.
Some classes are associated with one to four subsidiary classes, indicated by the letters A through D.
Some ideographs are assigned multiple classes. This can happen, for example, when an ideograph belongs to one class but is also the prototype for a different class. For example, U+570B 國 is the prototype for class 748, but is also a member of class 1416, which has U+6216 或 as its prototype. Its kPhonetic value is therefore “748 1416.”
Multiple values are always in ascending numerical order.
An asterisk is appended when an ideograph has the given phonetic class but is not explicitly included in the ideograph list for that class. For example, U+8753 蝓 belongs to the class 1611 but is not explicitly listed in that class. Its kPhonetic value is therefore “1611*.”
The Chinese Phonetic Groups page is a useful resource for browsing the kPhonetic property data.
The three Chinese numeric-value properties should have no overlap; that is, ideographs with a kPrimaryNumeric value should not have a kAccountingNumeric or kOtherNumeric value as well.
1) C or V. “C” indicates that the Unicode code point maps directly to the Adobe-Japan1-6 CID that appears after it, and “V” indicates that it is considered a variant form, and thus not directly encoded.
2) The Adobe-Japan1-6 CID.
3) Radical-stroke data for the indicated Adobe-Japan1-6 CID. The radical-stroke data consists of three pieces separated by periods: the Kangxi radical (1–214), the number of strokes in the form the radical takes in the glyph, and the number of strokes in the residue. The standard Unicode radical-stroke form can be obtained by omitting the second value, and the total strokes in the glyph from adding the second and third values.
U+0027 ' APOSTROPHE), double apostrophe (''), or triple apostrophe (''') suffix. A single apostrophe after the radical indicates a Chinese simplified version of the given radical. Two apostrophes after the radical indicates a non-Chinese simplified version of the given radical. Three apostrophes after the radical indicates a second non-Chinese simplified version of the given radical. The “additional strokes” value is the residual stroke-count, the count of all strokes remaining after eliminating all strokes associated with the radical.
This property is also used for additional radical-stroke indices where either an ideograph may be reasonably classified under more than one radical, or alternate stroke count algorithms may provide different stroke counts.
This property is targeted specifically for use by CLDR collation and transliteration. As such, it is subject to considerations that help keep pīnyīn-based Han collation (and its tailorings) and transliteration reasonably stable.
The residual stroke count may be negative. This is because some ideographs (for example, U+225A9 𢖩 and U+29C0A 𩰊) are constructed by removing strokes from a standard radical.
The 25,334 ideograph references are given in the form “ABC.XY”, in which: “ABC” is the zero-padded page number [004..546]; “XY” is the zero-padded number of the ideograph on the page [01..73]. For example, 364.38 indicates the 38th ideograph on Page 364 (i.e. 澍). Where a given Unicode Scalar Value has more than one reference, these are space-delimited.
-- Release information (20080814) --
This release corrects several mappings. This data set now contains a total of 25,334 references, for 19,583 different hanzi.
-- Release information (2003-10-05) --
This release corrects several mappings.
-- Release information (2002-03-10) --
This data set contains a total of 25,334 references, for 19,572 different hanzi (up from 25,330 and 19,511 in the previous release).
This release of the kSBGY data fixes a number of mappings, based on extensive work done since the initial release (compare the initial release counts given below). See the end of this header for additional information.
-- Initial release information (2002-03-10) --
The original data was input under the direction of Professor LUO Fengzhu at Taiwan Taoyuanxian Yuan Zhi University (see below) using an early version of the Big5-based CDP encoding scheme developed at Academia Sinica. During 2000–2002 this raw data was processed and revised by Richard Cook as follows: the data was converted to Unicode encoding using his revised kHanYu mapping tables (first provided to the Unicode Consortium for the Unihan database release 3.1.1d1) and also using several other mapping tables developed specifically for this project; the kSBGY indices were generated based on hand-counts of all page totals; numerous indexing errors were corrected; and the data underwent final proofing.
-- About the print sources --
The SBGY text, which dates to the beginning of the Song Dynasty (c. 1008, edited by 陳彭年 CHEN Pengnian et al.) is an enlargement of an earlier text known as 《切韻》 Qie Yun (dated to c. 601, edited by 陸法言 LU Fayan). With 25,330 head entries, this large early lexicon is important in part for the information which it provides for historical Chinese phonology. The GY dictionary employs a Chinese transcription method (known as 反切) to give pronunciations for each of its head entries. In addition, each syllable is also given a brief gloss.
It must be emphasized that the mapping of a particular SBGY glyph to a single Unicode Scalar Value may in some cases be merely an approximation or may have required the choice of a “best possible glyph” (out of those available in the Unicode repertoire). This indexing data in conjunction with the print sources will be useful for evaluating the degree of distinctive variation in the ideograph forms appearing in this text, and future proofing of this data may reveal additional Chinese glyphs for IRG encoding.
-- Bibliographic information on the print sources --
《宋本廣韻》 <<Song Ben Guang Yun>> [‘Song Dynasty edition of the Guang Yun Rhyming Dictionary’], edited by 陳彭年 CHEN Pengnian et al. (c. 1008).
Two modern editions of this work were consulted in building the kSBGY indices:
《新校正切宋本廣韻》。台灣黎明文化事業公司 出版，林尹校訂1976 年出版。[This was the edition used by Prof. LUO (台灣桃園縣元智大學中語系羅鳳珠), and in the subsequent revision, conversion, indexing and proofing.]
《新校互註‧宋本廣韻》。香港中文大學,余迺永 1993, 2000 年出版。ISBN: 962-201-413-5; 7-5326-0685-6. [Textual problems were resolved on the basis of this extensively annotated modern edition of the text.]
-- Additional Information --
For further information on this index data and the databases from which it is excerpted, see:
Cook, Richard S. 2003. 《說文解字‧電子版》 Shuo Wen Jie Zi - Dianzi Ban: Digital Recension of the Eastern Han Chinese Grammaticon. PhD Dissertation. Department of Linguistics. Berkeley: University of California.
The basic syntax is a Unicode Scalar Value. It may optionally be followed by additional data. The additional data is separated from the Unicode Scalar Value by a less-than sign (<), and may be subdivided itself into substrings by commas, each of which may be divided into two pieces by a colon. The additional data consists of a series of property tags for another property in the Unihan database indicating the source of the information. If these property tags are themselves subdivided by a colon, the final piece is a string consisting of the letters T (for tòng, U+540C 同) B (for bù, U+4E0D 不), Z (for zhèng, U+6B63 正), F (for fán, U+7E41 繁), or J (for jiǎn U+7C21 簡/U+7B80 简).
T is used if the indicated source explicitly indicates the two are the same (for example, by saying that the one ideograph is “the same as” the other).
B is used if the source explicitly indicates that the two are used improperly one for the other.
Z is used if the source explicitly indicates that the given ideograph is the preferred form. Thus, kHanYu indicates that U+5231 刱 and U+5275 創 are semantic variants and that U+5275 創 is the preferred form.
F is used if the source explicitly indicates that the given ideograph is the traditional form.
J is used if the source explicitly indicates that the given ideograph is the simplified form.
Data on simplified and traditional variations can be included in this property to document cases where different sources disagree on the nature of the relationship between two ideographs. The kSemanticVariant and kSpecializedSemanticVariant properties need not be consulted when interconverting between traditional and simplified Chinese.
As an example, U+3A17 㨗 has the kSemanticVariant value "U+6377<kHanYu:TZ". This means that, according to the Hanyu Da Zidian, U+3A17 㨗 and U+6377 捷 have identical meaning and that U+6377 捷 is the preferred form.
Much of the data on simplified and traditional variants was graciously supplied by Wenlin Institute, Inc.
If multiple values are present, the first is the primary entry for the ideograph. Other entries are simply cross-references to the primary entry and are in numeric order.
The complete bibliographic information for the Soengmou San Zidin is:
Wong Gongsang 黃港生, ed. Shangwu Xin Zidian / Soengmou San Zidin 商務新字典 (New Commercial Press Character Dictionary). Hong Kong: 商務印書館(香港)有限公司 (Commercial Press [Hong Kong], Ltd.), 2003. ISBN 962-07-0140-2.
Mandarin readings are in hànyǔ pīnyīn. Cantonese readings are in jyutping. Note that some ideographs have readings which would ordinarily be considered invalid, such as polysyllabic readings.
If an ideograph has multiple entries, it means that the ideograph has multiple definitions and the readings are grouped in order of those definitions.
A specialized semantic variant is an x- or y-variant with similar or identical meaning only in certain contexts. See Section 3.7.2 for a full description.
Category A = [A]symmetric (exhibits a structure that is asymmetric)
This property is fully documented in Unicode Technical Note #43, “Unihan Database Property ‘kStrange’” [UTN43].
Published by the Chinese government in 2013, this table includes 8,105 ideographs in three levels containing 3,500 (index numbers 1 through 3500), 3,000 (3501 through 6500), and 1,605 (6501 through 8105) ideographs, respectively. Ideographs for more general use are in the first two levels, with those in the first level being more frequently used. The ideographs in the third level are used for personal names, place names, and for science and technology.
The current version year is 2013, and the index numbers range from 1 to 8105.
Each pīnyīn reading is preceded by the ideograph’s location(s) in the dictionary, separated from the reading by a colon. Multiple locations for a given reading are separated by commas. Multiple “location: reading” values are separated by a space. Each location reference is of the form /d{3}\.\d{3}/. The number preceding the period is the page number, zero-padded to three digits. The first two digits of the number following the period are the entry’s position on the page, zero-padded. The third digit is 0 for a main entry and greater than 0 for a parenthesized or bracketed variant of the main entry.
– Bibliographical information –
《通用规范汉字字典》(Tōngyòng Guīfàn Hànzì Zìdiǎn = TGHZ; ‘General Purpose Normalized Hanzi Dictionary’). 商务印书馆辞书研究中心编 (Dictionary Research Center of the Commercial Press, eds.). 北京: 商务印书馆, 2013 [2013年7月第1版; 2013年9月北京第3次印刷; 印张 22⅞; ISBN 978-7-100-05961-9].
– Release Notes –
This data was input and prepared by Jaemin Chung (initial release 2019-04-24).
Distinct Unihan hànzì: 8,105
This property is targeted specifically for use by CLDR collation and transliteration. As such, it is subject to considerations that help keep pīnyīn-based Han collation (and its tailorings) and transliteration reasonably stable.
Much of the data on simplified and traditional variants was graciously supplied by Wenlin Institute, Inc.
The property value consists of an IRG source specifier as defined in Section 3.10 above.
Each pīnyīn reading is preceded by the ideograph’s location(s) in the dictionary, separated from the reading by a colon; multiple locations for a given reading are separated by commas; multiple “location: reading” values are separated by a space. Each location reference is of the form /\d{4}\.\d{3}\*?/. The number preceding the period is the page number, zero-padded to four digits. The first two digits of the number following the period are the entry’s position on the page, zero-padded. The third digit is 0 for a main entry and greater than 0 for a parenthesized variant of the main entry. A trailing asterisk (*) on the location indicates a unifiable variant substituted for an unencoded ideograph.
-- Bibliographical information --
《现代汉语词典》 [Xiàndài Hànyǔ Cídiǎn = XHC; ‘Modern Chinese Dictionary’]. 中国社会科学院语言研究所词典编辑室编 [Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Linguisitics Research Institute, Dictionary Editorial Office, eds.]. 北京: 商务印书馆, 1983 [1978 年 12 月第 1 版; 1983 年 1 月第 2 版; 1984 年 1 月北京第 49 次印刷印张 54; 统一书号: 17017.91].
Note that although there are later editions of this important PRC dictionary, reflecting developments and refinements in language and orthographic standardization, these editions should not be used in future revisions to this property.
-- Release Notes --
The Unihan version of this data was originally prepared by Richard Cook (initial release 2007-12-12), proofing and revising a subset of data contributed by Dr. George Bell (who input it with the help of Joy Zhao Rouzer, Steve Mann, et al., as one part of their “Quick and Easy Index of Chinese Characters with Attributes”; Bell 1995-2005).
Additional data and corrections were provided by Andrew West in 2022 for Unicode Version 15.1.
Distinct Unihan hànzì: 10,992;
As of Unicode Version 15.1, all ideographs in the dictionary which are not unifiable variants have been encoded. All are encoded as CJK Unified Ideographs, with one exception. The print source includes the entry “0719.100: líng” for U+3007 〇 IDEOGRAPHIC NUMBER ZERO. As this is not a CJK Unified Ideograph, it is not included in the Unihan database; see U+96F6 零.
Among the sources used for the property data are the following:
Ancient Zhuang Character Dictionary (古壮字字典), 1989, ISBN 7-5363-0614-8
The basic syntax is a Unicode Scalar Value. It may optionally be followed by additional data. The additional data is separated from the Unicode Scalar Value by a less-than sign (<), and may be subdivided itself into substrings by commas. The additional data consists of a series of property tags for another property in the Unihan database indicating the source of the information.
The table below lists the properties of the Unihan database by the version of the Unicode Standard in which they were first added. Also included are properties that were removed in a particular version. Properties that were removed in Version 4.1 or later are linked to either the UTC document in which their removal was proposed or the particular consensus in UTC meeting minutes that confirms their removal.
Version Properties Added Properties Removed 17.0.0 kTayNumeric kGB7, kJa 16.0.0 kFanqie, kZhuang kFrequency 15.1.0 kJapanese, kMojiJoho, kSMSZD2003Index, kSMSZD2003Readings, kVietnameseNumeric, kZhuangNumeric kHKSCS, kIRGDaiKanwaZiten, kKPS0, kKPS1, kKSC0, kKSC1, kRSKangXi 15.0.0 kAlternateTotalStrokes 14.0.0 kStrange 13.0.0 kIRG_SSource, kIRG_UKSource, kSpoofingVariant, kTGHZ2013, kUnihanCore2020 kRSJapanese, kRSKanWa, kRSKorean 12.0.0 kDefaultSortKey (private property) 11.0.0 kJinmeiyoKanji, kJoyoKanji, kKoreanEducationHanja, kKoreanName, kTGH 8.0.0 kJa 5.2 kHanyuPinyin, kIRG_MSource 5.1 kXHC1983 5.0 kCheungBauer, kCheungBauerIndex, kFourCornerCode, kHangul 4.1 kFennIndex, kIICore, kRSAdobe_Japan1_6 kAlternateKangXi, kAlternateMorohashi 4.0.1 kGSR, kHanyuPinlu, kIRG_USource 3.2 kAccountingNumeric, kCihaiT, kCompatibilityVariant, kFrequency, kGradeLevel, kOtherNumeric, kPrimaryNumeric, kSBGY kAlternateHanYu 3.1.1 kCangjie, kCowles, kFenn, kHKGlyph, kHKSCS, kIRG_KPSource, kJIS0213, kKPS0, kKPS1, kKarlgren, kLau, kVietnamese 3.1 kIRG_HSource, kMeyerWempe, kPhonetic, kTotalStrokes kAlternateJEF, kJHJ, kRSMerged 3.0 kAlternateJEF, kIRGDaeJaweon, kIRGDaiKanwaZiten, kIRGHanyuDaZidian, kIRGKangXi, kIRG_GSource, kIRG_JSource, kIRG_KSource, kIRG_TSource, kIRG_VSource, kJHJ, kRSMerged, kSemanticVariant (reintroduced), kSpecializedSemanticVariant (reintroduced) 2.1 kSemanticVariant, kSpecializedSemanticVariant 2.0 kAlternateHanYu, kAlternateKangXi, kAlternateMorohashi, kCNS1992, kCantonese, kDaeJaweon, kDefinition, kHanYu, kJapaneseKun, kJapaneseOn, kKangXi, kKorean, kMainlandTelegraph, kMandarin, kMatthews, kMorohashi, kNelson, kRSJapanese, kRSKanWa, kRSKangXi, kRSKorean, kRSUnicode, kSemanticVariant , kSimplifiedVariant, kSpecializedSemanticVariant, kTaiwanTelegraph, kTang, kTraditionalVariant, kZVariantThe remaining properties were added prior to Unicode 2.0.
4.3 Listing by Location withinUnihan.zip
The table below lists the properties of the Unihan database. They are organized into groups according to the file within Unihan.zip where their values are found. Each property name also links to its description.
The grouping of properties into files may differ between versions of the Unicode Standard. Parsers should not rely on the data for a particular property being listed in any specific file.
File Name Properties Within File Unihan_DictionaryIndices.txt kCheungBauerIndex, kCihaiT, kCowles, kDaeJaweon, kFennIndex, kGSR, kHanYu, kIRGDaeJaweon, kIRGHanyuDaZidian, kIRGKangXi, kKangXi, kKarlgren, kLau, kMatthews, kMeyerWempe, kMorohashi, kNelson, kSBGY, kSMSZD2003Index Unihan_DictionaryLikeData.txt kAlternateTotalStrokes, kCangjie, kCheungBauer, kFenn, kFourCornerCode, kGradeLevel, kHDZRadBreak, kHKGlyph, kMojiJoho, kPhonetic, kStrange, kUnihanCore2020 Unihan_IRGSources.txt kCompatibilityVariant, kIICore, kIRG_GSource, kIRG_HSource, kIRG_JSource, kIRG_KPSource, kIRG_KSource, kIRG_MSource, kIRG_SSource, kIRG_TSource, kIRG_UKSource, kIRG_USource, kIRG_VSource, kRSUnicode, kTotalStrokes Unihan_NumericValues.txt kAccountingNumeric, kOtherNumeric, kPrimaryNumeric, kTayNumeric, kVietnameseNumeric, kZhuangNumeric Unihan_OtherMappings.txt kBigFive, kCCCII, kCNS1986, kCNS1992, kEACC, kGB0, kGB1, kGB3, kGB5, kGB8, kIBMJapan, kJinmeiyoKanji, kJis0, kJis1, kJIS0213, kJoyoKanji, kKoreanEducationHanja, kKoreanName, kMainlandTelegraph, kPseudoGB1, kTaiwanTelegraph, kTGH, kXerox Unihan_RadicalStrokeCounts.txt kRSAdobe_Japan1_6 Unihan_Readings.txt kCantonese, kDefinition, kFanqie, kHangul, kHanyuPinlu, kHanyuPinyin, kJapanese, kJapaneseKun, kJapaneseOn, kKorean, kMandarin, kSMSZD2003Readings, kTang, kTGHZ2013, kVietnamese, kXHC1983, kZhuang Unihan_Variants.txt kSemanticVariant, kSimplifiedVariant, kSpecializedSemanticVariant, kSpoofingVariant, kTraditionalVariant, kZVariant 4.4 Listing of Ideographs Covered by the Unihan DatabaseThe following table lists the ideographs covered by the Unihan database, together with the version in which they were added to the Unicode Standard.
Code Point Range Block Name Version Count U+3400..U+4DB5 CJK Unified Ideographs Extension A 3.0 6,582 U+4DB6..U+4DBF 13.0 10 U+4E00..U+9FA5 CJK Unified Ideographs 1.1 20,902 U+9FA6..U+9FBB 4.1 22 U+9FBC..U+9FC3 5.1 8 U+9FC4..U+9FCB 5.2 8 U+9FCC 6.1 1 U+9FCD..U+9FD5 8.0 9 U+9FD6..U+9FEA 10.0 21 U+9FEB..U+9FEF 11.0 5 U+9FF0..U+9FFC 13.0 13 U+9FFD..U+9FFF 14.0 3 U+F900..U+FA2D CJK Compatibility Ideographs† 1.1 302 U+FA2E..U+FA2F 6.1 2 U+FA30..U+FA6A 3.2 59 U+FA6B..U+FA6D 5.2 3 U+FA70..U+FAD9 4.1 106 U+20000..U+2A6D6 CJK Unified Ideographs Extension B 3.1 42,711 U+2A6D7..U+2A6DD 13.0 7 U+2A6DE..U+2A6DF 14.0 2 U+2A700..U+2B734 CJK Unified Ideographs Extension C 5.2 4,149 U+2B735..U+2B738 14.0 4 U+2B739 15.0 1 U+2B73A..U+2B73F 17.0 6 U+2B740..U+2B81D CJK Unified Ideographs Extension D 6.0 222 U+2B820..U+2CEA1 CJK Unified Ideographs Extension E 8.0 5,762 U+2CEA2..U+2CEAD 17.0 12 U+2CEB0..U+2EBE0 CJK Unified Ideographs Extension F 10.0 7,473 U+2EBF0..U+2EE5D CJK Unified Ideographs Extension I 15.1 622 U+2F800..U+2FA1D CJK Compatibility Ideographs Supplement 3.1 542 U+30000..U+3134A CJK Unified Ideographs Extension G 13.0 4,939 U+31350..U+323AF CJK Unified Ideographs Extension H 15.0 4,192 U+323B0..U+33479 CJK Unified Ideographs Extension J 17.0 4,298 Total 102,998† Note: 12 code points in the CJK Compatibility Ideographs block (U+FA0E, U+FA0F, U+FA11, U+FA13, U+FA14, U+FA1F, U+FA21, U+FA23, U+FA24, and U+FA27 through U+FA29) lack a canonical Decomposition_Mapping value in UnicodeData.txt, and so are not actually CJK Compatibility Ideographs. These twelve ideographs are CJK Unified Ideographs.
Note that some CJK characters do not explicitly have property data in the Unihan database, such as:
Code Point Range Block Name Version Count U+2E80..U+2E99 CJK Radicals Supplement 3.0 26 U+2E9B..U+2EF3 3.0 89 U+2F00..U+2FD5 Kangxi Radicals 3.0 214 U+3000..U+3037 CJK Symbols and Punctuation 1.1 56 U+3038..U+303A 3.0 3 U+303B..U+303D 3.2 3 U+303E 3.0 1 U+303F 1.1 1 U+3190..U+319F Kanbun 1.1 16 U+31C0..U+31CF CJK Strokes 4.1 16 U+31D0..U+31E3 5.1 20 U+31E4..U+31E5 16.0 2 U+3220..U+3243 Enclosed CJK Letters and Months 1.1 36 U+3244..U+324F 5.2 12 U+3280..U+32B0 1.1 49 U+32C0..U+32CB 1.1 12 U+32D0..U+32FE 1.1 47 U+32FF 12.1 1 U+3358..U+3370 CJK Compatibility 1.1 25 U+337B..U+337F 1.1 5 U+33E0..U+33FE 1.1 31 U+1F210..U+1F231 Enclosed Ideographic Supplement 5.2 34 U+1F232..U+1F23A 6.0 9 U+1F23B 9.0 1 U+1F240..U+1F248 5.2 9 U+1F250..U+1F251 6.0 2Some of the above-listed blocks of CJK characters have additional property data and documentation, in particular see:
The following table provides a formal identification of sources used by the Unihan database, together with bibliographic information. This listing only includes sources without a corresponding property in the Unihan database. It should not be taken as exhaustive.
Identifier Bibliographic Information sGZJZD1989 饒秉才, ed. Guangzhou Yin Zidian / Gwongzau Jam Zidin 廣州音字典 (Cantonese Character Dictionary). Hong Kong: 三聯(香港)有限公司 (Joint Publishing [Hong Kong], Ltd.), 1989. ISBN 962-04-0389-4 sHanyuDaCidian1986 Luo Zhufeng 羅竹風, ed. Hanyu Da Cidian (Suoyinben) 漢語大詞典(縮印版) (Hanyu Da Cidian [Compact Edition]). n.p.: 漢語大詞典出版社 (Chinese Dictionary Publishing House), 1986. ISBN 7-5432-0014-7 5 HistoryThe Unihan database originated as a Hypercard stack using data provided by such organizations as Apple, RLG, and Xerox. Printed versions are found in The Unicode Standard, Version 1.0, volume 2. Electronic versions were available on floppy disk in the form of a file called CJKXREF.TXT.
The first general electronic release of CJKXREF.TXT (961 kB) was included with Unicode 1.1.5 in July 1995. This version of the file is in a multi-column format and includes the data used in printing The Unicode Standard, Version 1.0, volume 2 with the exception of the Fujitsu mappings, which were found to be incorrect and withdrawn.
The electronic version of the Unihan database was substantially revised for the publication of Unicode 2.0.0 in July 1996. The file was renamed UNIHAN.TXT; its permanent, archival link is Unihan-1.txt (7.9 MB). The format of the file is essentially the same as the current release, although consolidated into a single file. The properties were explicitly named for the first time. The data was at the time maintained using custom, MacApp-based database software. The source code for this software used an enumerated type for the numeric property tags, and the enumerator names (each beginning with a k indicating their use as a constant) were used in the text file as property names.
The difficulty of downloading a file 19 MB in size with the technology of the time led to the Unihan database being made available as both a single text file and compressed archives of that text file as of Unicode 3.1.0 in March 2001. The format of the Unihan database remained essentially unchanged until Unicode 5.1.0 (April 2008), when the text file was no longer included and the database became available only as a zipped archive.
Finally, the archive was changed from containing one text file to containing multiple text files as of Unicode 5.2.0 (October 2009).
Anomalies and formatting errors are to be found in various versions of the database file. Specifically:
Unihan-1.txt, the version 2.0.0 Unihan database file, was at some point accidentally truncated on line 330,553 (partway through the data for U+8BC1 证). No corrected version of the file was made available. Instead, it was superseded by the Unihan-2.txt (10 MB) file released with Unicode 2.1.2 in May 1998. The CD that is included with the Unicode Version 2.0 book has the same truncation issue, specifically that the files at {DOS,MAC,UNIX}/MAPPINGS/EASTASIA/UNIHAN.TXT are truncated at the same position.Unihan-3.1.1.txt, includes the following anomalous record at line 246,442: U+64AC 297.Please refer to Unicode Technical Note #45, “Unihan Property History” [UTN45], for more information about the history of Unihan database properties, in terms of which properties are included in each version of the Unicode Standard from Version 1.1.5 onward, along with how many ideographs are covered by each property.
ReferencesFor references for this annex, see Unicode Standard Annex #41, “Common References for Unicode Standard Annexes.”
AcknowledgementsJohn H. Jenkins 井作恆 (RIP) was the author of the initial version of this annex, and served as a co-editor up through and including Version 33 for Unicode Version 15.0.0. Richard Cook served as a co-editor up through and including Version 37 for Unicode Version 16.0.0.
ModificationsThe following summarizes modifications from the previous revision of this annex.
Revision 39\d instead of [0-9].Revision 38 being a proposed update, only changes between revisions 37 and 39 are noted here.
Previous revisions can be accessed with the “Previous Version” link in the header.
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