What 蓼 means
No. 蓼 is the legacy compatibility form of 蓼.
蓼 names a pungent waterside herb, called smartweed in English. It appears in 蓼莪, a poem in the Shijing (Book of Odes), a collection of poems dated 1100–600 BCE; there, 蓼 refers to the plant and also carries the sense “tall.”
Chinese records also use 蓼 in names: a state from the Spring and Autumn period, a county, and surnames. Japanese reads 蓼 as たで, pronounced “tah-deh,” for the plant; Korean Hanja readings are written 료 or 요. The Japanese proverb 蓼食う虫も好き好き uses an insect that eats the plant to mean tastes differ, reworking a Chinese saying about hardship; Japanese dictionaries still list it as of 2026-09-14.
How do I keep 蓼 from becoming 蓼?
Keep 蓼 only when the source-specific form matters.
Unicode retained it for round-trip conversion with legacy encodings, including a Korean source mapping. For ordinary new text, use 蓼; this form preserves old source data, not a typographic upgrade.
Normalization can map 蓼 to 蓼 and lose the source-specific glyph distinction. The standardized variation sequence 蓼︀ (U84FC UFE00) can preserve it when the font and text pipeline support it.
Technical and archival: 蓼 marks a legacy source form; 蓼 is the ordinary choice for new writing.
Use 蓼 only when preserving source data or its glyph distinction.
Who writes 蓼
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Don't confuse it with
1
Questions people ask
1Why did 蓼 turn into 蓼?
Normalization can do that. It can replace 蓼 with 蓼, preserving the meaning while losing the legacy glyph distinction.
More like this
8
How to type or find 蓼
- Search it as
- 蓼 · 蓼 · F9C2 · U+F9C2 · compatibility character · normalization · KS X 1001 · Hanja
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
蓼\F9C2Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.