Crane Variant

It names the long-legged crane bird. Chinese character dictionaries list 䳽 as a variant of 鶴; Mandarin reads 鶴 as hè.

How old is it?

The Unicode entry came later. Two Chinese character dictionaries, Longkan Shoujian and Sisheng Pianhai, record 䳽 as a variant of 鶴. One account traces its shape to the seal-script form (an early Chinese writing style) in Shuowen Jiezi, an early character dictionary; another calls it a copying error from 鸖 that became established.

In Chinese writing, 鶴 evokes white hair, longevity, and mounts for immortals. In 2023, Unicode added 𮹙 in a fast-tracked batch tied to China’s GB 18030 standard for encoding Chinese text.