Eel character

They are linked forms, but not the same code point.

Extension G gathers rare or historical CJK characters—Han characters used in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean writing—so the 2020 date records digital encoding, not the origin of the written form. Unicode 17.0’s chart prints 鰻 as the reference glyph for this entry, while the exact character here is 𱇁.

In Chinese, 鰻魚 is read mán yú; in Japanese, 鰻 is read unagi (うなぎ). The Man’yōshū, an early Japanese poetry anthology, spells the eel word as 武奈伎 (munagi) in an 8th-century poem, using those characters for their sounds. That attests the word, not this exact rare glyph.