What ቨ means
It supplies the consonant v.
The Ethiopic script developed from South Arabian writing, an alphabet used across the Red Sea. Inscriptions in Ethiopia and Eritrea date to the 8th/7th centuries BCE; Ethiopic writing for Geʿez, a classical church language, appears in the 1st–3rd centuries CE. A linguistic study attributes ቨ to Catholic missionaries in the 17th century, who used it to transcribe Portuguese.
Don't confuse it with
1Questions people ask
1Why does ቨ 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 ቨ
Windows (Word)
Alt+XType 1268, then Alt+X to get ቨ.
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 va”.
Linux
Ctrl+Shift+UType 1268, then Enter or Space.
HTML
ቨCSS
\1268SIL Ethiopic version 2.0.1
To type ቨ on SIL Ethiopic version 2.0.1, press uppercase B, then lowercase v. If it appears as a box, your font may lack Ethiopic coverage.
Codes and encoding1 code points
HTML decimal
ቨ
HTML hex
ቨ
CSS content
content: "\1268";
Each escape is closed by the next backslash; a trailing space is needed before a literal hex digit.
URL encoded
%E1%89%A8
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.