What 钴 means
Modern Chinese uses 钴 as the one-character name for cobalt.
A 1871 chemistry textbook, 化學鑑原, by Xu Shou and John Fryer helped establish one-character names for elements. The pattern appears in 钴蓝 (cobalt blue) and 钴60 (cobalt-60).
Warring States bronze inscriptions record 鈷 as a variant of 簠, an ancient ritual food vessel; 鈷鉧 was an old term for a clothes iron.
Technical Chinese, especially chemistry and materials writing.
Alone in chat, it may read like unexplained jargon.
What it means when someone sends it to you
2 readings钴 on its own
Cobalt, the element or a cobalt-bearing material.
In 钴蓝 or 钴60
The cobalt-blue pigment or the cobalt-60 isotope.
Questions people ask
1Why does 钴 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 钴
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 94B4, then Alt+X to get 钴.
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-94b4”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 94b4, then Enter or Space.
HTML
钴CSS
\94B4Mandarin Pinyin
In a mainland-style Pinyin IME, type gu to select 钴 (gǔ, low dipping tone).
Traditional Chinese
Traditional writing uses 鈷; Taiwan Mandarin references read it gū, with a steady high tone.
Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
钴
HTML hex
钴
CSS content
content: "\94B4";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E9%92%B4
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.