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禹

cjk unified ideograph-79b9

Character Yu

禹 is yu, the name of Yu the Great, the legendary flood controller and founder of the Xia in Chinese tradition. In a message, read it as a person's name or a classical allusion like dayu, not as a generic water icon. Its written trail is older than the finished legend.

Text symbol
Also called
Yu · Yu the Great · Da Yu
Search it as
dàyǔ · yugong · xia · floodcontrol
Shows up in
Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws

What 禹 means

It names Yu the Great, a flood-control hero and Xia founder.

The character's written trail is older than the finished legend. A graph read as yu appears in Period I Shang oracle-bone inscriptions, dated ca. 1240–1181 BCE. The earliest known excavated reference to the legendary Yu is placed in a mid-Western Zhou bronze inscription, where Heaven commands Yu to spread land, break mountains, and dredge rivers.

The story then widens: later histories make Yu a founder-ruler, while the Han Shuowen tradition preserves an insect gloss. A ninth-century BCE bronze inscription also treats Yu as a founder or earth deity honored in a harvest thanksgiving. Copy it from the palette above if your keyboard will not produce it.

Classical, literary, and name-like; it signals a historical allusion, not casual chat.

Do not use 禹 as a generic water icon.

What it means when someone sends it to you

4 readings
Someone sends 禹 alone
Read it as a name or classical allusion; ask for context before guessing a joke.
大禹 in the message
Yu the Great, especially the flood-control tradition.
夏禹 in the message
Yu linked to the Xia dynasty and its founding story.
禹贡 in the message
The classical Tribute of Yu text or a territory-and-waterways allusion.

Don't confuse it with

2
𥜼
CJK Unified Ideograph-2573C
Recorded ancient form of 禹; same character, stranger shape.
𢁰
CJK Unified Ideograph-22070
Another recorded variant of 禹; not a different historical figure.

Combination ideas

3
Yu the Great, the flood-controller figure.
Yu as the founder associated with the Xia dynasty.
The classical Tribute of Yu text and its territory survey.

Questions people ask

1

Why does 禹 show as a box on some devices?

Because that device's fonts have no glyph for it. The character is still correct and still copies correctly — the box is a missing glyph, not a broken character.

How to type 禹

Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 79B9, then Alt+X to get 禹.
Windows
Win+Rrun charmap for the full table, or use the emoji picker's Ω symbols tab (Win + .).
macOS
Control+Command+SpaceOpen the character viewer and search “cjk unified ideograph-79b9”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 79b9, then Enter or Space.
HTML
禹
CSS
\79B9
Mandarin Pinyin 禹
Type yu, then choose 禹; the reading is yǔ, third tone.
Tone-aware Pinyin
Use yu3 when supported; Microsoft HanYu Pinyin uses 1–5 for tones.
Windows Bopomofo
On Windows 11, press backquote, U, 79B9, then Space for direct entry.
Cangjie
Use HLBI in a Cangjie IME; Taiwan's CNS table lists those component keys.
Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
禹
HTML hex
禹
CSS content
content: "\79B9";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E7%A6%B9
1
On screen
1
Code points
1
JS .length
3
UTF-8 bytes

A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.

Families this belongs to

2

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