What ן means
It is Hebrew nun in its word-ending form.
In ordinary Hebrew spelling, use נ when more letters follow and ן when nun closes the word. The longer shape changes where the letter belongs, not how you pronounce it.
Why does Hebrew have a final nun?
The two shapes developed through handwriting.
One account dates the distinction to around 300 BCE, during the development of square Hebrew—the script used for modern Hebrew, descended from Imperial Aramaic writing. It explains the long ending stroke as a shape retained at word edges while the form inside words became more compact.
Jewish rabbinic tradition offers a religious account: prophets restored the five final letter forms after their use was forgotten. This is a different kind of explanation from tracing changes in handwriting.
How do I type ן?
Select a Hebrew keyboard layout and its final-nun key.
The documented layout in How to type uses I; another layout may differ. נ and ן are separate text characters, so do not rely on automatic conversion at a word’s end.
A neutral spelling form, not a chat reaction.
If ן appears inside a modern Hebrew word, check the spelling or source text.
Part of the collection
Who writes ן
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Don't confuse it with
1
Alphabet
Questions people ask
1Can a Hebrew word end with נ instead of ן?
It can. Names, foreign borrowings, and some Yiddish spellings may retain the ordinary form at a word’s end. Yiddish is a language written with Hebrew letters; that ending is not automatically an error.
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Collections with ן
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How to type or find ן
- Also called
- nun sofit
- Search it as
- hebrew nun · sofit
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
ן\05DFCodes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.