㴝

㴝 is a rare variant of 黎, read lí in Mandarin. Its dictionary senses are “many” and a surname. The water radical on its left is a shape component, not a water meaning — variant records tie the character to 黎.

Taiwan's Ministry of Education dictionary of character variants (2024) does not list 㴝 in the Shuowen Jiezi, China's oldest character dictionary. Its earliest cited source is the Longkan Shoujian — also written Longkan Shoujing — a dictionary of difficult characters in Buddhist texts completed in 997. That is why the shape survived: collected for readers, not created as a Buddhist emblem.

黎 itself carries the older, wider history: the Shuowen explains it as millet paste used to make footwear adhere, and later senses include the common people, black or dark, and dawn — the black sense later split off as 黧. 㴝 inherits the family but keeps a far narrower entry.

Should you use 㴝 or 黎?

Use 黎 for ordinary modern Chinese. Reach for 㴝 only when reproducing a source, preserving a name, or discussing variant forms — it changes the shape, not the meaning. In a historical text, read it through 黎.

Why does 㴝 show as a box?

The active font lacks this Extension A glyph. 㴝 is a text ideograph with no emoji artwork or picker fallback, so a hollow square means a font problem — switch fonts; the character itself is unchanged.