Khitan Small Script Character 18C79

An isolated glyph has no reliable word translation. Khitan Small Script was developed about 925 CE to write Khitan. It appears in records from the Liao and Jin dynasties and the Qara Khitai state, especially on funerary epitaphs; surviving Khitan-language inscriptions date from the 11th and 12th centuries.

Unicode gives these characters numbered names to identify them; those labels do not translate Khitan words. Khitan Small Script is only partly deciphered. It combines signs for whole words with signs for sounds; sound signs usually form clusters of two to eight characters for one word. Two cluster layouts are recorded; the difference is stylistic, not semantic, so 𘱹 may be only one piece of a word.

Khitan also used a Large Script for the same language and similar functions. Jurchen records preserve a few inscriptions in a structurally similar small script; that script-level resemblance does not establish a matching glyph for 𘱹. Khitan Small Script is also reported to have drawn on Uyghur writing, though surviving similarities are few.

Why does 𘱹 show as a box or rotated?

Your font or app may lack Khitan layout support. A font can include a drawing of 𘱹 without the layout support full Khitan text needs. The script uses vertical columns running right to left and two-dimensional clusters, so missing support may leave a box, rotate a glyph, or flatten a cluster into a line.

Unicode input can add the character, but it cannot supply a missing font or rebuild a cluster. For a transcription, preserve the surrounding characters and their grouping; one glyph alone cannot show whether it represents a whole word or a piece of one.