Documentation for What Unicode character is this ?

Unicode Support

Supports all 154,998 named characters defined in Unicode 16.0 (released September 2024).

Format of Output

For each character, its hexadecimal code point value is prefixed U+, followed by the official character name, with any abbreviation in square brackets. For a very few characters with incorrect names, the formal character name alias listed in NameAliases.txt is noted in parentheses following the character name. Where available, informative aliases listed in the Unicode code charts are appended in braces.

For characters which do not have a defined character name (i.e. control characters, private use characters, unpaired surrogates, and noncharacters), the code point label is given in angle brackets in place of the name (e.g. <control-0009> for the tab character). For control characters, the corresponding name given in ISO/IEC 6429:1992 is given in parentheses.

Tangut Ideographs

For Tangut ideographs, the algorithmic character name is followed in parentheses by the identifying source reference for the character in TangutSources.txt. Where available, the simple (and sometimes misleading or incomplete) English meaning of the character given in the English index to Lǐ Fànwén's 李範文 Tangut-Chinese Dictionary 夏漢字典 (rev. ed., 2008) is appended in braces.

Khitan Small Script Characters

For Khitan Small Script characters, the reading (in lowercase) and/or the meaning (in capitals) is appended in braces if known. This information is based on (with some modifications): Wu Yingzhe [Wú Yīngzhé 吴英喆] and Juha Janhunen, New Materials on the Khitan Small Script: A Critical Edition of Xiao Dilu and Yelü Xiangwen (Folkestone: Global Oriental, 2010).

Egyptian Hieroglyphs

For Egyptian hieroglyphs, a description of the glyph is appended in braces. These descriptions are taken from the kEH_Desc field of the Unikemet database.

Unified Ideographs

For CJK unified ideographs, only the algorithmic character name is currently given, but additional information may be provided in the future.

CJK Compatibility Ideographs

For CJK compatibility ideographs, the algorithmic character name is followed by the variation sequence mapping for the corresponding CJK unified ideograph.

URL parameters

The following URL parameters are supported:

Specify a single Unicode character, e.g. https://www.babelstone.co.uk/Unicode/whatisit.html?char=🤦 (should work for BMP and supra-BMP characters on all major browsers)
Specify a string of Unicode characters, e.g. https://www.babelstone.co.uk/Unicode/whatisit.html?string=🤦Q☃á€香 (should work on all major browsers)
Specify a string of Unicode characters in UTF-16 encoding, e.g. https://www.babelstone.co.uk/Unicode/whatisit.html?unicode=🤦Q☃á€香 (works for browsers such as Internet Explorer and Edge which use UTF-16 encoding)
Specify a string of Unicode characters as UTF-16 escape sequences, e.g. https://www.babelstone.co.uk/Unicode/whatisit.html?unicode=%uD83E%uDD26%u0051%u2603%u00E1%u20AC%u9999 (should work on all major browsers)
Specify a string of Unicode characters in UTF-8 encoding, e.g. https://www.babelstone.co.uk/Unicode/whatisit.html?utf8=🤦Q☃á€香 (works for browsers such as Google Chrome and Firefox which use UTF-8 encoding)
Specify a string of Unicode characters as UTF-8 escape sequences, e.g. https://www.babelstone.co.uk/Unicode/whatisit.html?utf8=%F0%9F%A4%A6%51%E2%98%83%C3%A1%E2%82%AC%E9%A6%99 (should work on all major browsers)
Specify a string of ASCII characters with hexadecimal or decimal NCR escape codes for Unicode characters, e.g. https://www.babelstone.co.uk/Unicode/whatisit.html?decode=🤦Q☃á€香 (should work on all major browsers)
Check or uncheck the "Code points" checkbox, e.g. https://www.babelstone.co.uk/Unicode/whatisit.html?string=🤦&codes=no ("yes" or "no")
Check or uncheck the "Annotations" checkbox, e.g. https://www.babelstone.co.uk/Unicode/whatisit.html?string=🤦&notes=no ("yes" or "no")

NB for the decode parameter only, any codes or notes parameters must be included before the decode parameter, e.g. https://www.babelstone.co.uk/Unicode/whatisit.html?codes=no&notes=no&decode=🤦.

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