What 𗣀 means
A Tangut character — its pronunciation is reconstructed, its meaning is not.
The sources agree on the glyph but not on a gloss. A Tangut homophone study files it under ²rer₄, one scholarly reconstruction of its sound — nobody alive speaks Tangut. Western Xia household registers place it inside personal names, transcribed rjijr². As of 2026, no everyday English translation is established — the Unicode name is a catalogue label, not a meaning.
The script was invented around 1036 as a state project for Western Xia (Xīxià), an empire in what is now northwestern China. It handled government business, private papers, and Buddhist books, and outlived the dynasty's fall in 1227 — which is why 𗣀 lives in archives, not chats.
How do I type 𗣀?
Your keyboard can't — use a code-point tool or a Tangut input method.
In Microsoft Word, type 178C0 then AltX. On Linux, press CtrlShiftU, type 178c0, and confirm. On a Mac, the Character Viewer finds it by code. In HTML, write 𗣀. Anything beyond a one-off uses specialist Tangut input methods — stroke codes or reconstructed sound.
Displaying it is half the battle: everyday fonts skip Tangut, so many systems draw a box. A Tangut-capable font fixes that — and slight outline differences between fonts are normal, since Unicode records variant glyph shapes in Tangut sources.
Historical and scholarly — at home in text faithful to sources or script study, out of place in casual chat.
It is not Chinese — never guess a meaning or mood from the look of the strokes.
Who writes 𗣀
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Worth knowing
- Nearly every Tangut character is a compound — built from two or more smaller components; simple ones barely exist.
Questions people ask
3Is 𗣀 a Chinese character?
No. Tangut was invented by people who knew Chinese writing but built a separate script for their own language — 𗣀 is not a Han character.
Why does 𗣀 appear as a box?
A font gap, not a broken character. Everyday fonts skip Tangut; install one that covers it and the same glyph appears.
Is the Tangut script still used?
Only in scholarship. Inscriptions were still carved under the Ming dynasty, but as living writing it faded; today it lives in dictionaries, fonts, and decoded documents.
More like this
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How to type or find 𗣀
- Search it as
- tangut · tangut script · xixia · western xia · tangut character · tangut font · tangut input · rjijr
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
𗣀\178C0Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.