What ኵ means
It belongs to Ethiopic’s labialized K-W series. The lips round for its K-like consonant; the vowel varies by language.
Early Ethiopic writing came from South Arabian consonant writing, which usually left vowels unwritten, and first served the Geʿez language. Around the 4th century CE it became an abugida: each sign joins a consonant and vowel. Later it was adapted for Amharic, Tigre, Oromo, and other languages.
Don't confuse it with
2Questions people ask
1Why does ኵ 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 ኵ
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 12B5, then Alt+X to get ኵ.
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 “ethiopic syllable kwe”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 12b5, then Enter or Space.
HTML
ኵCSS
\12B5Keyman layout
Keyman’s 1.0.3 Modern Ge’ez manual maps `kuu` to ኵ; Unicode does not standardize keystrokes, so other layouts may differ.
Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
ኵ
HTML hex
ኵ
CSS content
content: "\12B5";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E1%8A%B5
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.