Tangut character 𗇩

It means “ancestor” or “forefather” in Tangut.

Tangut was the language; the Tangut script was its writing system in Western Xia. The Unicode label is generated from the code point, while L2008-1549 points to the entry in Li Fanwen’s Tangut–Chinese dictionary, a reference work pairing the two languages. Neither identifier is an English translation.

One account credits a figure called Teacher Iri with devising the script around 1037 for official use and Buddhist translations. After Western Xia fell in 1227, people still wrote Tangut manuscripts, Buddhist works, laws, and other texts; the latest known inscription is dated 1502. Tangut forms drew on Chinese and Khitan writing, but Tangut was a distinct language and script. It later became a subject of historical study and font design.

Why does 𗇩 show as a box?

The active font may lack Tangut glyphs.

𗇩 is text and needs a Tangut-capable font. Without one, a browser or app may show an empty box, a question-mark diamond, or another missing-glyph mark. Different fonts may draw the same character in different styles.

Before Tangut was encoded in Unicode, some fonts mapped its glyphs onto code points used for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean characters (CJK); incompatible mappings can make old documents render incorrectly. For new text, use a Unicode input method. To read an old file, use its matching font or convert it to Unicode.