Khitan Small Script Character 18C28

It is reconstructed as the sound gú. In an 1113 tomb inscription, 𘰨 spells part of a personal name recorded in Chinese as Kuyu. Comparing the texts revised an earlier reading, pú; gú is a scholarly sound reconstruction, not a translation.

Yelü Diela, brother of a Khitan emperor, is credited with creating the script around 925 to write Khitan. It was used alongside the Khitan Large Script, another way to write the language. Its creation is said to have been inspired by Uyghur writing, though the scripts look quite different. The first known dated text is from 1053; use continued into the early Jin period.

Why can 𘰨 be hard to display?

It needs a font with Khitan Small Script support. In running text, signs for sounds form word-sized clusters, usually in vertical columns ordered right to left; a lone glyph in a horizontal line hides that structure.