CJK Compatibility Ideograph FA99

Unicode maps it to 滋; its legacy form preserves source data.

It stays in the standard for round-trip conversion with North Korea’s KPS 10721-2000 character set: the same data can go out to that older set and come back without losing the encoded form.

A 2024 entry in Taiwan’s Ministry of Education Dictionary of Chinese Character Variants connects the older form 玆 with 滋. It cites the Shuowen, an early Chinese character dictionary, and a passage from the Zuozhuan chronicle; the entry records meanings such as “black” or “turbid.”

Is this the same as 滋?

In normalized Unicode text, yes: it is canonically equivalent to 滋.

A 2021 working paper on Han characters challenges the source identification. It analyzes one recorded form as 氵 plus 玆 (the water element plus 玆), gives it the Mandarin reading xuán (roughly “shwen,” with a rising tone), and argues that it differs from 滋 in shape, sound, and meaning. The paper proposes a distinction; it does not change Unicode’s mapping.

Unicode also defines the standardized variation sequence 滋︀: 滋 followed by Variation Selector-1. It asks a supporting font to display the variant form.

What does it mean when someone sends it?

Read it from its source, not its appearance alone.

After normalization, treat it as 滋. In a KPS record, preserve the source form; beside a dictionary note with xuán, consider the proposed 玆-based reading.

If it appears as a box or a different regional drawing, the font may be missing the glyph or substituting a Han form. The display alone cannot settle which character was encoded.