CJK Unified Ideographs explained

The Chinese, Japanese and Korean (CJK) scripts share a common background, collectively known as CJK characters. During the process called Han unification, the common (shared) characters were identified and named CJK Unified Ideographs. As of Unicode version=15.1, Unicode defines a total of 97,680 characters.^[1]

The term ideographs is a misnomer, as the Chinese script is not ideographic but rather logographic.

Until the early 20th century, Vietnam also used Chinese characters (Chữ Nôm), so sometimes the abbreviation CJKV is used.

Sources

The Ideographic Research Group (IRG) is responsible for developing extensions to the encoded repertoires of CJK unified ideographs. IRG processes proposals for new CJK unified ideographs submitted by its member bodies, and after undergoing several rounds of expert review, IRG submits a consolidated set of characters to ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2 Working Group 2 (WG2) and the Unicode Technical Committee (UTC) for consideration for inclusion in the ISO/IEC 10646 and Unicode standards. The following IRG member bodies have been involved in the standardization of CJK unified ideographs:

• China
• Hong Kong
• Japan
• South Korea
• North Korea
• Macau
• Taiwan, liaison member represented by the Taipei Computer Association (TCA)
• Vietnam
• Unicode Technical Committee (liaison member)
• United Kingdom
• SAT (liaison member)

The ideographs submitted by the UTC and the United Kingdom are not specific to any particular region, but are characters which have been suggested for encoding by individual experts. The ideographs submitted by SAT are required for the SAT Daizōkyō text database.

The table below gives the numbers of encoded CJK unified ideographs for each IRG source for Unicode 15.1.^[2] The total number of characters (224,286) far exceeds the number of encoded CJK unified ideographs (97,680) as many characters have more than one source.

CJK unified ideographs by source

Country or region	Character count
China	66,563
Hong Kong	17,654
	344
(TCA)	58,601
Japan	16,148
	20,739
	23,975
	13,284
United Kingdom	2,503
SAT	3,455
UTC	1,020
Total	224,286

UTC sources

The majority of characters submitted by the UTC to the IRG are derived from Unicode Technical Committee (UTC) documents.^[3] Other sources include:

• ABC Chinese-English Dictionary by John DeFrancis
• The Adobe-CNS1 glyph collection
• The Adobe-Japan1 glyph collection
• A Complete Checklist of Species and Subspecies of Chinese Birds (中国鸟类系统检索)
• The Great Nom Dictionary (Đại Tự Điển Chữ Nôm)
• Annotations to Shuowen Jiezi (annotated by Duan Yucai)
• GB18030-2000
• Required Character List Supplied by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Hong Kong)
• New Commercial Dictionary (商务新词典), Hong Kong
• Modern Chinese Dictionary (现代汉语词典), by Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Linguistics Research Institute, Dictionary Editorial Office
• Working Group (WG2) documents

CJK Unified Ideographs blocks

CJK Unified Ideographs

The basic block named CJK Unified Ideographs (4E00–9FFF) contains 20,992 basic Chinese characters in the range U+4E00 through U+9FFF. The block not only includes characters used in the Chinese writing system but also kanji used in the Japanese writing system, hanja in Korea, and chữ Nôm characters in Vietnamese. Many characters in this block are used in all three writing systems, while others are in only one or two of the three. The first 20,902 characters in the block are arranged according to the Kangxi Dictionary ordering of radicals. In this system the characters written with the fewest strokes are listed first. The remaining characters were added later, and so are not in radical order.

The block is the result of Han unification,^[4] which was somewhat controversial within East Asia.^[5] Since Chinese, Japanese and Korean characters were coded in the same location, the appearance of a selected glyph could depend on the particular font being used. However, the source separation rule states that characters encoded separately in an earlier character set would remain separate in the new Unicode encoding.^[6]

Using variation selectors, it is possible to specify certain variant CJK ideograms within Unicode.^[7] The Adobe-Japan1 character set, which has 14,684 ideographic variation sequences,^[8] is an extreme example of the use of variation selectors.^[9]

Charts

4E00-62FF,6300-77FF,7800-8CFF,8D00-9FFF.

Sources

Note: Most characters appear in multiple sources, so the sum of individual character counts (102,795) is far greater than the number of encoded characters (20,992).^[10]

Country or region	Code	Source^[11]	Character count	Total
China	G0		6,763	20,933
	G1	GB 12345-90	2,202
	G3	GB 7589-87 traditional form	4,834
	G5	GB 7590-87 traditional form	2,841
	G7	Modern Chinese general character chart (Simplified Chinese: 现代汉语通用字表)	42
	G8		199
	GCE		4
	GDM	Place name characters from the Public Order Administration, Ministry of Public Security of the People's Republic of China	2
	GE	GB16500-95	3,772
	GFC	Modern Chinese Standard Dictionary (现代汉语规范词典第二版)	2
	GGFZ	Tongyong Guifan Hanzi Zidian (通用规范汉字字典)	1
	GH	GB/T 15564-1995	59
	GHZ	Hanyu Da Zidian (漢語大字典)	1
	GHZR	Hanyu Da Zidian 2nd ed. (汉语大字典, 第二版)	1
	GK	GB 12052-89	89
	GKJ	Terms in Sciences and Technologies (科技用字) approved by the China National Committee for Terms in Sciences and Technologies (CNCTST)	16
	GKX	Kangxi Dictionary (康熙字典)	3
	GLK	Longkan Shoujian (龍龕手鑑)	1
	GT	Standard Telegraph Codebook (revised), 1983	8
	GU	No source (the original source reference may have been moved)	92
	GZFY	Hanyu Fangyan Dacidian (汉语方言大词典)	1
Hong Kong	H	Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set, 2008	2,292	15,376
	HB0	Computer Chinese Glyph and Character Code Mapping Table, Technical Report C-26 (電腦用中文字型與字碼對照表, 技術通報C-26)	9
	HB1	Big-5, Level 1	5,401
	HB2	Big-5, Level 2	7,650
	HD	Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set, 2016	24
Japan	J0		6,356	12,565
	J1		3,058
	J13	JIS X 0213:2004 level-3 characters replacing J1 characters	1,037
	J13A	JIS X 0213:2004 level-3 character addendum from JIS X 0213:2000 level-3 replacing J1 character	2
	J14	JIS X 0213:2004 level-4 characters replacing J1 characters	1,704
	J3	JIS X 0213	JIS X 0213:2004 Level 3		95
	J3A	JIS X 0213:2004 Level 3 addendum	7
	J4	JIS X 0213:2004 Level 4	301
	JARIB		3
	JMJ	Character Information Development and Maintenance Project for e-Government "MojiJoho-Kiban Project" (文字情報基盤整備事業)	2
	K0	KS C 5601-87 (now KS X 1001:2004)	4,620	15,442
	K1	KS C 5657-91 (now KS X 1002:2001)	2,855
	K2	PKS C 5700-1:1994	7,911
	K3	PKS C 5700-2:1994	1
	K4	PKS 5700-3:1998	4
	K6	KS X 1027-5:2014	49
	KC	Korean History On-Line (한국 역사 정보 통합 시스템)	1
	KU	No source (the original source reference may have been moved)	1
	KP0	KPS 9566-97	4,652	15,010
	KP1	KPS 10721-2000	10,358
	MA	HKSCS-2008	29	200
	MB1	Big Five	10
	MB2	Big Five	7
	MC	MCSCS Reference	3
	MD	MCSCS horizontal extensions	127
	MDH	MCSCS horizontal extensions	24
	T1	CNS 11643-1992 plane 1	5,413	18,384
	T2	CNS 11643-1992 plane 2	7,651
	T3	CNS 11643-1992 plane 3	4,144
	T4	CNS 11643-1992 plane 4	894
	T5	CNS 11643-1992 plane 5	64
	T6	CNS 11643-1992 plane 6	31
	T7	CNS 11643-1992 plane 7	16
	TB	CNS 11643-2007 plane 11	2
	TC	CNS 11643-2007 plane 12	2
	TE	CNS 11643-2007 plane 14	9
	TF	CNS 11643-2007 plane 15	158
	V0	TCVN 5773:1993	599	4,808
	V1	TCVN 6056:1995	3,305
	V2	VHN 01-1998	759
	V3	VHN 02-1998	91
	V4	Kho Chữ Hán Nôm Mã Hoá (Hán Nôm Coded Character Repertoire)	19
	VN	Vietnamese horizontal extensions	35
n/a	UTC		77	77

In Unicode 4.1, 14 HKSCS-2004 characters and 8 GB 18030 characters were assigned to between U+9FA6 and U+9FBB code points. Since then, other additions were added to this block for various reasons, all summarized in the version history section below.

CJK Unified Ideographs Extension A

The block named CJK Unified Ideographs Extension A (3400–4DBF) contains 6,592 additional characters in the range U+3400 through U+4DBF.

Charts

3400-4DBF.

Sources

Note: Most characters appear in more than one source, so the sum of individual character counts (18,835) is far greater than the number of encoded characters (6,592).^[10]

Country or region	Code	Source	Character count	Total
	G3	GB 7589-87 traditional form	2,391	6,197
	G5	GB 7590-87 traditional form	1,226
	G7		120
	GGFZ	Tongyong Guifan Hanzi Zidian (通用规范汉字字典)	2
	GHZ	Hanyu Da Zidian (漢語大字典)	340
	GKJ	Terms in Sciences and Technologies (科技用字) approved by the China National Committee for Terms in Sciences and Technologies (CNCTST)	3
	GKX	Kangxi Dictionary (康熙字典)	1,889
	GS	Singapore Chinese characters	226
Hong Kong	H	Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set, 2008	572	572
	J3	JIS X 0213:2004 Level 3	2	738
	J4	JIS X 0213:2004 Level 4	78
	JA	Japanese IT Vendors Contemporary Ideographs, 1993	574
	JA3	JIS X 0213:2004 level-3 characters replacing JA characters	17
	JA4	JIS X 0213:2004 level-4 characters replacing JA characters	67
	K3	PKS C 5700-2:1994	1,833	1,866
	K4	PKS 5700-3:1998	2
	K6	KS X 1027-5:2014	28
	KC	Korean History On-Line (한국 역사 정보 통합 시스템)	3
	KP0	KPS 9566-97	1	3,191
	KP1	KPS 10721-2000	3,190
	MA	HKSCS-2008	4	12
	MD	MCSCS horizontal extensions	8
	T3	CNS 11643-1992 plane 3	2,179	5,916
	T4	CNS 11643-1992 plane 4	2,919
	T5	CNS 11643-1992 plane 5	399
	T6	CNS 11643-1992 plane 6	200
	T7	CNS 11643-1992 plane 7	133
	TE	CNS 11643-2007 plane 14	1
	TF	CNS 11643-2007 plane 15	85
United Kingdom	UK	IRG N2107R2	3	3
	V0	TCVN 5773:1993	140	319
	V2	VHN 01-1998	149
	V3	VHN 02-1998	19
	V4	Kho Chữ Hán Nôm Mã Hoá (Hán Nôm Coded Character Repertoire)	5
	VN	Vietnamese horizontal extensions	6
n/a	UTC		21	21

CJK Unified Ideographs Extension B

The block named CJK Unified Ideographs Extension B (20000–2A6DF) contains 42,720 characters in the range U+20000 through U+2A6DF. These include most of the characters used in the Kangxi Dictionary that are not in the basic CJK Unified Ideographs block, as well as many Hán-Nôm characters that were formerly used to write Vietnamese.

Charts

20000-215FF,21600-230FF,23100-245FF,24600-260FF,26100-275FF,27600-290FF,29100-2A6DF.

Sources

Note: Many characters appear in more than one source, so the sum of individual character counts (74,208) is far greater than the number of encoded characters (42,720).^[10]

Country or region	Code	Source	Character count	Total
	G3	GB 7589-87 traditional form	1	30,550
	G4K	Siku Quanshu (四庫全書)	477
	GBK	Encyclopedia of China (中國大百科全書)	86
	GCH	Cihai (辞海)	247
	GCY	Ciyuan (辭源)	66
	GFZ	Founder Press System	65
	GGFZ	Tongyong Guifan Hanzi Zidian (通用规范汉字字典)	5
	GHC	Hanyu Da Cidian (漢語大詞典)	553
	GHF	Hanwen fodian yinan suzi huishi yu yanjiu (漢文佛典疑難俗字彙釋與研究)	1
	GHZ	Hanyu Da Zidian (漢語大字典)	10,508
	GHZR	Hanyu Da Zidian 2nd ed. (汉语大字典, 第二版)	1
	GKJ	Terms in Sciences and Technologies (科技用字) approved by the China National Committee for Terms in Sciences and Technologies (CNCTST)	17
	GKX	Kangxi Dictionary (康熙字典)	18,471
	GU	No source (the original source reference may have been moved)	52
Hong Kong	H	Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set, 2008	1,703	1,703
	J3	JIS X 0213:2004 Level 3	25	303
	J3A	JIS X 0213:2004 Level 3 addendum	1
	J4	JIS X 0213:2004 Level 4	277
	K1	KS C 5657-91 (now KS X 1002:2001)	1	261
	K4	PKS 5700-3:1998	166
	K6	KS X 1027-5:2014	80
	KC	Korean History On-Line (한국 역사 정보 통합 시스템)	14
	KP1	KPS 10721-2000	5,765	5,765
	MA	HKSCS-2008	9	38
	MC	MCSCS Reference	2
	MD	MCSCS horizontal extensions	27
	T3	CNS 11643-1992 plane 3	25	30,193
	T4	CNS 11643-1992 plane 4	3,408
	T5	CNS 11643-1992 plane 5	8,111
	T6	CNS 11643-1992 plane 6	5,934
	T7	CNS 11643-1992 plane 7	6,299
	TA	CNS 11643-2007 plane 10	8
	TB	CNS 11643-2007 plane 11	6
	TC	CNS 11643-2007 plane 12	1
	TF	CNS 11643-2007 plane 15	6,401
	UK	IRG N2107R2	12	12
	V0	TCVN 5773:1993	1,570	5,299
	V1	TCVN 6056:1995	1
	V2	VHN 01-1998	2,286
	V3	VHN 02-1998	422
	V4	Kho Chữ Hán Nôm Mã Hoá (Hán Nôm Coded Character Repertoire)	33
	VN	Vietnamese horizontal extensions	987
n/a	SAT	SAT Daizōkyō Text Database	1	84
	UTC		83

CJK Unified Ideographs Extension C

The block named CJK Unified Ideographs Extension C (2A700–2B73F) contains 4,154 characters in the range U+2A700 through U+2B739. It was initially added in Unicode 5.2 (2009).

Charts

2A700-2B73F.

Sources

Note: Some characters appear in more than one source, so the sum of individual character counts (4,570) is greater than the number of encoded characters (4,154).^[10]

Country or region	Code	Source	Character count	Total
	GBK	Encyclopedia of China (中國大百科全書)	74	1,130
	GCH	Cihai (辞海)	264
	GCY	Ciyuan (辭源)	1
	GCYY	Chinese Academy of Surveying and Mapping ideographs	55
	GDM	Place name characters from the Public Order Administration, Ministry of Public Security of the People's Republic of China	1
	GFZ	Founder Press System	1
	GGFZ	Tongyong Guifan Hanzi Zidian (通用规范汉字字典)	2
	GGH	Gudai Hanyu Cidian (古代汉语词典)	51
	GHC	Hanyu Da Cidian (漢語大詞典)	14
	GHZ	Hanyu Da Zidian (漢語大字典)	1
	GHZR	Hanyu Da Zidian 2nd ed. (汉语大字典, 第二版)	1
	GJZ	Commercial Press ideographs	61
	GKJ	Terms in Sciences and Technologies (科技用字) approved by the China National Committee for Terms in Sciences and Technologies (CNCTST)	6
	GKX	Kangxi Dictionary (康熙字典)	6
	GXC	Xiandai Hanyu Cidian (现代汉语词典)	25
	GZFY	Hanyu Fangyan Dacidian (汉语方言大词典)	202
	GZJW	Yin Zhou Jinwen Jicheng Yinde (殷周金文集成引得)	365
Hong Kong	H	Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set, 2008	1	1
	JK	Japanese Kokuji Collection	367	367
	K5	Korean IRG Hanja Character Set	404	406
	K6	KS X 1027-5:2014	1
	KC	Korean History On-Line (한국 역사 정보 통합 시스템)	1
	KP1	KPS 10721-2000	8	8
	MC	MCSCS Reference	17	21
	MD	MCSCS horizontal extensions	4
	T5	CNS 11643-1992 plane 5	1	1,752
	TC	CNS 11643-2007 plane 12	634
	TD	CNS 11643-2007 plane 13	766
	TE	CNS 11643-2007 plane 14	350
	TU	No source (the original source reference may have been moved)	1
	UK	IRG N2107R2	1	1
	V0	TCVN 5773:1993	4	795
	V1	TCVN 6056:1995	2
	V2	VHN 01-1998	1
	V4	Kho Chữ Hán Nôm Mã Hoá (Hán Nôm Coded Character Repertoire)	782
	VN	Vietnamese horizontal extensions	6
n/a	UTC	UTC sources	89	89

CJK Unified Ideographs Extension D

The block named CJK Unified Ideographs Extension D (2B740–2B81F) contains 222 characters in the range U+2B740 through U+2B81D that were added in Unicode 6.0 (2010).

Charts

2B740–2B81F.

Sources

Note: Some characters appear in more than one source, so the sum of individual character counts (229) is greater than the number of encoded characters (222).^[10]

Country or region	Code	Source	Character count	Total
	GCH	Cihai (辞海)	1	78
	GIDC	ID System of the Ministry of Public Security of China	32
	GKJ	Terms in Sciences and Technologies (科技用字) approved by the China National Committee for Terms in Sciences and Technologies (CNCTST)	2
	GXC	Xiandai Hanyu Cidian (现代汉语词典)	4
	GZH	Zhonghua Zihai (中华字海)	39
	JH	Hanyo-Denshi Program (汎用電子情報交換環境整備プログラム)	107	107
	TB	CNS 11643-2007 plane 11	24	24
n/a	UTC		20	20

CJK Unified Ideographs Extension E

The block named CJK Unified Ideographs Extension E (2B820–2CEAF) contains 5,762 characters in the range U+2B820 through U+2CEA1 that were added in Unicode 8.0 (2015).

Charts

2B820–2CEAF.

Sources

Note: Some characters appear in more than one source, so the sum of individual character counts (5,830) is greater than the number of encoded characters (5,762).^[10]

Country or region	Code	Source	Character count	Total
	GBK	Encyclopedia of China (中國大百科全書)	15	2,821
	GCH	Cihai (辞海)	112
	GCY	Ciyuan (辭源)	3
	GCYY	Chinese Academy of Surveying and Mapping ideographs	98
	GDZ	Geology Press ideographs	1
	GGFZ	Tongyong Guifan Hanzi Zidian (通用规范汉字字典)	4
	GGH	Gudai Hanyu Cidian (古代汉语词典)	175
	GHC	Hanyu Da Cidian (漢語大詞典)	7
	GIDC	ID System of the Ministry of Public Security of China	36
	GJZ	Commercial Press ideographs	147
	GKJ	Terms in Sciences and Technologies (科技用字) approved by the China National Committee for Terms in Sciences and Technologies (CNCTST)	2
	GKX	Kangxi Dictionary (康熙字典)	22
	GRM	People's Daily ideographs	3
	GU	No source (the original source reference may have been moved)	1
	GWZ	Hanyu Da Cidian Press ideographs	12
	GXC	Xiandai Hanyu Cidian (现代汉语词典)	57
	GXH	Xinhua Zidian (新华字典)	4
	GZFY	Hanyu Fangyan Dacidian (汉语方言大词典)	712
	GZJW	Yin Zhou Jinwen Jicheng Yinde (殷周金文集成引得)	1,410
Hong Kong	HD	Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set, 2016	1	1
	JK	Japanese Kokuji Collection	415	415
	KC	Korean History On-Line (한국 역사 정보 통합 시스템)	7	7
	MC	MCSCS Reference	48	51
	MD	MCSCS horizontal extensions	3
	T3	CNS 11643-1992 plane 3	2	1,261
	TB	CNS 11643-2007 plane 11	2
	TC	CNS 11643-2007 plane 12	323
	TD	CNS 11643-2007 plane 13	595
	TE	CNS 11643-2007 plane 14	339
	UK	IRG N2107R2	2	2
	V0	TCVN 5773:1993	6	1,036
	V2	VHN 01-1998	1
	V4	Kho Chữ Hán Nôm Mã Hoá (Hán Nôm Coded Character Repertoire)	1,023
	VN	Vietnamese horizontal extensions	6
n/a	UTC		236	236

CJK Unified Ideographs Extension F

The block named CJK Unified Ideographs Extension F (2CEB0–2EBEF) contains 7,473 characters in the range U+2CEB0 through 2EBE0 that were added in Unicode 10.0 (2017). It includes more than 1,000 Sawndip characters for Zhuang.

Charts

2CEB0–2EBEF.

Sources

Note: Some characters appear in more than one source, so the sum of individual character counts (7,774) is greater than the number of encoded characters (7,473).^[10]

Country or region	Code	Source	Character count	Total
	GCY	Ciyuan (辭源)	122	1,309
	GFC	Modern Chinese Standard Dictionary (现代汉语规范词典第二版)	27
	GIDC	ID System of the Ministry of Public Security of China	1
	GKJ	Terms in Sciences and Technologies (科技用字) approved by the China National Committee for Terms in Sciences and Technologies (CNCTST)	5
	GLGYJ	Zhuang Liao Songs Research (壮族嘹歌研究)	1
	GOCD	Oxford English-Chinese Chinese-English Dictionary (牛津英汉汉英词典)	2
	GPGLG	Zhuang Folk Song Culture Series - Pingguo County Liao Songs (壮族民歌文化丛书•平果嘹歌)	70
	GXHZ	Xinhua Da Zidian (新华大字典)	51
	GZ	Ancient Zhuang Character Dictionary (古壮字字典)	995
	GZJW	Yin Zhou Jinwen Jicheng Yinde (殷周金文集成引得)	33
	GZYS	Chinese Ancient Ethnic Characters Research (中国民族古文字研究)	2
Hong Kong	HD	Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set, 2016	1	1
	JMJ	Character Information Development and Maintenance Project for e-Government "MojiJoho-Kiban Project" (文字情報基盤整備事業)	1,645	1,645
	KC	Korean History On-Line (한국 역사 정보 통합 시스템)	1,810	1,810
	MC	MCSCS Reference	22	22
	T3	CNS 11643-1992 plane 3	1	3
	T6	CNS 11643-1992 plane 6	1
	TC	CNS 11643-2007 plane 12	1
	UK	IRG N2107R2	2	2
	V0	TCVN 5773:1993	1	17
	V4	Kho Chữ Hán Nôm Mã Hoá (Hán Nôm Coded Character Repertoire)	8
	VN	Vietnamese horizontal extensions	8
n/a	SAT	SAT Daizōkyō Text Database	2,884	2,965
	UTC		81

CJK Unified Ideographs Extension G

A block named CJK Unified Ideographs Extension G was added as part of Unicode 13.0 to the Tertiary Ideographic Plane in the range U+30000 through U+3134F, containing 4,939 characters.^[12]

Charts

30000–3134F.

Sources

Note: Some characters appear in more than one source, so the sum of individual character counts (5,081) is greater than the number of encoded characters (4,939).^[10]

Country or region	Code	Source	Character count	Total
	GHZR	Hanyu Da Zidian 2nd ed. (汉语大字典, 第二版)	878	2,082
	GPGLG	Zhuang Folk Song Culture Series - Pingguo County Liao Songs (壮族民歌文化丛书•平果嘹歌)	13
	GZ	Ancient Zhuang Character Dictionary (古壮字字典)	1,191
	KC	Korean History On-Line (한국 역사 정보 통합 시스템)	435	435
	T13	CNS 11643 (pending new version) plane 19	347	353
	TB	CNS 11643-2007 plane 11	3
	TC	CNS 11643-2007 plane 12	2
	TD	CNS 11643-2007 plane 13	1
	UK	IRG N2107R2	1,566	1,566
	V4	Kho Chữ Hán Nôm Mã Hoá (Hán Nôm Coded Character Repertoire)	6	76
	VN	Vietnamese horizontal extensions	70
n/a	SAT	SAT Daizōkyō Text Database	329	569
	UTC	UTC sources	240

CJK Unified Ideographs Extension H

A block named CJK Unified Ideographs Extension H was added as part of Unicode 15.0 to the Tertiary Ideographic Plane in the range U+31350 through U+323AF, containing 4,192 characters.^[13]

Charts

31350–323AF.

Sources

Note: Some characters appear in more than one source, so the sum of individual character counts (4,306) is greater than the number of encoded characters (4,192).^[10]

Country or region	Code	Source	Character count	Total
	GDM	Place name characters from the Public Order Administration, Ministry of Public Security of the People's Republic of China	128	829
	GHC	Hanyu Da Cidian (漢語大詞典)	27
	GKJ	Terms in Sciences and Technologies (科技用字) approved by the China National Committee for Terms in Sciences and Technologies (CNCTST)	30
	GLGYJ	Zhuang Liao Songs Research (壮族嘹歌研究)	11
	GPGLG	Zhuang Folk Song Culture Series - Pingguo County Liao Songs (壮族民歌文化丛书•平果嘹歌)	14
	GU	No source (the original source reference may have been moved)	1
	GXM	Characters for use in personal names in China from Public Order Administration, Ministry of Public Security of the People's Republic of China	216
	GZ	Ancient Zhuang Character Dictionary (古壮字字典)	285
	GZA-1	A Vibrant and Unbroken Transmission—Filial Piety and Zhuang Funeral Songs (生生不息的传承•孝与壮族行孝歌之研究)	6
	GZA-2	Annotated Long Zhuang Morality Songs (壮族伦理道德长诗传扬歌译注)	38
	GZA-3	Compendium of Old Zhuang Folksong Texts—Wooing Songs vol. 1—Liao Songs (壮族民歌古籍集成•情歌（一）嘹歌)	2
	GZA-4	Compendium of Old Zhuang Folksong Texts—Wooing Songs vol. 1—Fwen Nganx (壮族民歌古籍集成•情歌（二）欢)	11
	GZA-6	Zhuang Proverbs from China (中国壮族谚语)	59
	GZA-7	Ancient Remembrance—Zhuang Creation Myth Songs (远古的追忆•壮族创世神话古歌研究)	1
	KC	Korean History On-Line (한국 역사 정보 통합 시스템)	512	512
	KP1	KPS 10721-2000	1	1
	T12	CNS 11643 (pending new version) plane 18	7	714
	T13	CNS 11643 (pending new version) plane 19	696
	T4	CNS 11643-1992 plane 4	1
	T6	CNS 11643-1992 plane 6	1
	TB	CNS 11643-2007 plane 11	5
	TC	CNS 11643-2007 plane 12	3
	TE	CNS 11643-2007 plane 14	1
	UK	IRG N2232R	917	917
	V0	TCVN 5773:1993	6	931
	V4	Kho Chữ Hán Nôm Mã Hoá (Hán Nôm Coded Character Repertoire)	74
	VN	Vietnamese horizontal extensions	851
n/a	SAT	SAT Daizōkyō Text Database	241	402
	UTC	UTC sources	161

CJK Unified Ideographs Extension I

A block named CJK Unified Ideographs Extension I was added as part of Unicode version=15.1 to the Supplementary Ideographic Plane in the range U+2EBF0 through U+2EE5F, containing 622 characters.^[14]

Charts

2EBF0–2EE5F.

Sources

CJK Compatibility Ideographs

The block named CJK Compatibility Ideographs (F900–FAFF) was created to retain round-trip compatibility with other standards.

However, twelve characters in this block actually have the "Unified Ideograph" property: U+FA0E 﨎, U+FA0F 﨏, U+FA11 﨑, U+FA13 﨓, U+FA14 﨔, U+FA1F 﨟, U+FA21 﨡, U+FA23 﨣, U+FA24 﨤, U+FA27 﨧, U+FA28 﨨, and U+FA29 﨩.^[1] None of the other characters in this and other "Compatibility" blocks relate to CJK unification.

While 龜 and 亀 are not considered unifiable, it is not clear why is considered equivalent to .

Charts

F900–FAFF.

Sources

Note: All characters appear in more than one source, so the sum of individual character counts (36) is greater than the number of encoded characters (12).^[10]

Country or region	Code	Source	Character count	Total
China	GU	No source (the original source reference may have been moved)	12	12
	J3	JIS X 0213:2004 Level 3	3	8
	J4	JIS X 0213:2004 Level 4	3
	JA	Japanese IT Vendors Contemporary Ideographs, 1993	1
	JA3	JIS X 0213:2004 level-3 characters replacing JA characters	1
	TF	CNS 11643-2007 plane 15	1	1
	V0	TCVN 5773:1993	3	3
n/a	UTC		12	12

Known issues

Disunification

U+4039

The character U+4039 (䀹) was a unification of two different characters (one with jiā 夾 phonetic and one with shǎn 㚒 phonetic) until Unicode 5.0. However, they were lexically different characters that should not have been unified; they have different pronunciations and different meanings.

The proposal of disunification of U+4039^[15] was accepted for Unicode 5.1, encoding a new character at U+9FC3 (鿃) to represent shǎn.

Other 3 glyphs in Extension B

In CJK Unified Ideographs Extension B, some characters are incorrectly unified with others. These characters include U+2017B, U+204AF and U+24CB2 . The first two characters contained a wrong unification of Chinese Mainland and Vietnamese source of their glyph, while the last one unifies the Chinese Mainland and Taiwanese ones.^[16]

Unifiable variants and exact duplicates

Also in CJK Unified Ideographs Extension B, hundreds of glyph variants were encoded by mistake.^[17] Additionally, an ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 2 report has found that six exact duplicates (where the same character has inadvertently been encoded twice) and two semi-duplicates (where the CJK-B character represents a de facto disunification of two glyph forms unified in the corresponding BMP character) were encoded by mistake:^[18]

• U+34A8 㒨 = U+20457 : U+20457 is the same as the China-source glyph for U+34A8, but it is significantly different from the Taiwan-source glyph for U+34A8
• U+3DB7 㶷 = U+2420E : same glyph shapes
• U+8641 虁 = U+27144 : U+27144 is the same as the Korean-source glyph for U+8641, but it is significantly different from the Chinese Mainland-, Taiwan- and Japan-source glyphs for U+8641
• U+204F2 = U+23515 : same glyph shapes, but ordered under different radicals
• U+249BC = U+249E9 : same glyph shapes
• U+24BD2 = U+2A415 : same glyph shapes, but ordered under different radicals
• U+26842 = U+26866 : same glyph shapes
• U+FA23 﨣 = U+27EAF : same glyph shapes (U+FA23 﨣 is a unified CJK ideograph, despite its name "CJK COMPATIBILITY IDEOGRAPH-FA23.")

Other CJK ideographs in Unicode, not Unified

Apart from the ten blocks of "Unified Ideographs," Unicode has about a dozen more blocks with not-unified CJK-characters. These are mainly CJK radicals, strokes, punctuation, marks, symbols and compatibility characters. Although some characters have their (decomposable) counterparts in other blocks, the usages can be different. An example of a not-unified CJK-character is in the CJK Symbols and Punctuation block. Although it is not covered under "CJK Unified Ideographs", it is treated as a CJK-character for all other intents and purposes.^[19]

Four blocks of compatibility characters are included for compatibility with legacy text handling systems and older character sets:

• CJK Compatibility (3300–33FF)
• CJK Compatibility Forms (FE30–FE4F)
• CJK Compatibility Ideographs (F900–FAFF)
• CJK Compatibility Ideographs Supplement (2F800–2FA1F)

They include forms of characters for vertical text layout and rich text characters that Unicode recommends handling through other means. Therefore, their use is discouraged.

Font support

The blocks CJK Unified Ideographs and CJK Unified Ideographs Extension A, being parts of the Basic Multilingual Plane, are supported by the majority of the CJK fonts. However, Japanese and Korean fonts usually have fewer characters (about 13,000 and 8,000, respectively) than Chinese. Extensions B, C, D are supported by additional fonts MingLiU-ExtB, MingLiU_HKSCS-ExtB, PMingLiU-ExtB, SimSun-ExtB included in Microsoft Windows since Vista.^[20]

Unicode version history

CJK unified ideographs additions per Unicode version

Unicode version	Addition	Plane	Characters added	Total characters
1.0 (1991)	CJK Unified Ideographs	Basic Multilingual Plane (BMP)	20,902	20,914
	CJK Compatibility Ideographs	BMP	12
3.0 (1999)	CJK Unified Ideographs Extension A	BMP	6,582	27,496
3.1 (2001)	CJK Unified Ideographs Extension B	Supplementary Ideographic Plane (SIP)	42,711	70,207
4.1 (2005)	CJK Unified Ideographs: Ideographs from HKSCS-2004 and GB 18030-2000 not in ISO 10646	BMP	22	70,229
5.1 (2008)	CJK Unified Ideographs: Ideographs from Adobe Japan and disunification of U+4039	BMP	8	70,237
5.2 (2009)	CJK Unified Ideographs Extension C	SIP	4,149	74,394
	8 other characters from ARIB #47, #95, #93 and HKSCS	BMP	8
6.0 (2010)	CJK Unified Ideographs Extension D	SIP	222	74,616
6.1 (2012)	1 character corresponding to Adobe-Japan1-6 CID+20156	BMP	1	74,617
8.0 (2015)	CJK Unified Ideographs Extension E	SIP	5,762	80,388
	9 other characters	BMP	9
10.0 (2017)	CJK Unified Ideographs Extension F	SIP	7,473	87,882
	21 other characters	BMP	21
11.0 (2018)	CJK Unified Ideographs	BMP	5	87,887
13.0 (2020)	CJK Unified Ideographs	BMP	13	92,856
	CJK Unified Ideographs Extension A	BMP	10
	CJK Unified Ideographs Extension B	SIP	7
	CJK Unified Ideographs Extension G	Tertiary Ideographic Plane (TIP)	4,939
14.0 (2021)	CJK Unified Ideographs	BMP	3	92,865
	CJK Unified Ideographs Extension B	SIP	2
	CJK Unified Ideographs Extension C	SIP	4
15.0 (2022)	CJK Unified Ideographs Extension C	SIP	1	97,058
	CJK Unified Ideographs Extension H	TIP	4,192
15.1 (2023)	CJK Unified Ideographs Extension I	SIP	622	97,680

See also

• Han unification
• List of Unicode characters
• List of CJK fonts
• Ideographic Research Group
• Chinese cultural sphere

External links

• UK-Source Ideographs (Documents IRG N2107R2 and IRG N2232R)

Notes and References

1. Web site: Unicode 15.1 UCD: PropList.txt. 2023-08-01. 2023-09-12.
2. Web site: Unicode 15.1 UCD: Unihan: Unihan_IRGSources.txt. 2023-07-15. 2024-08-05.
3. Web site: UAX #45: U-source Ideographs. Unicode Consortium. Ken. Lunde. 2023-07-17.
4. https://unicode.org/versions/Unicode4.0.0/appA.pdf The Unicode Standard 4.0, Appendix A - Han Unification History
5. Suzanne Topping, Web site: The secret life of Unicode . 2010-05-12 . 2007-11-14 . https://web.archive.org/web/20071114203735/http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/java/library/u-secret.html . bot: unknown .
6. "Chapter 11 - East Asian scripts", The Unicode standard, 4.0.
7. Web site: Ideographic Variation Database . 2022-09-13. 2022-09-20.
8. Web site: IVD Stats. 2022-09-13. 2022-09-20.
9. https://www.unicode.org/ivd/pri/pri108/index.html PRI 108: Combined registration of the Adobe Japan1 collection and of sequences in that collection
10. Web site: Unihan_IRGSources.txt (from Unihan.zip) . 2023-07-15. 2023-09-12.
11. Web site: UAX #38: Unicode Han Database (Unihan). Unicode Consortium. 2023-09-01.
12. Web site: Unicode 13.0.0. 10 March 2020. 10 March 2020.
13. Web site: Unicode 15.0.0. 13 September 2022. 14 September 2022.
14. Web site: Unicode 15.1.0. 2023-09-12. 2023-09-12.
15. [Andrew West (linguist)|Andrew West]
16. Eiso Chan (陈永聪), Comments on four error glyphs on CJK Unified Ideographs Ext B & E.https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2017/17049-four-cjk-comments.pdf
17. Web site: IRGN1155 Possible Duplicates. 2019-06-22. Taichi Kawabata. .zip.
18. Web site: Cook . Richard . Defect Report on Duplicate Encoded CJK Forms . ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2 . 6 October 2003 . 2012-03-28 .
19. GB/T 15835-2011《出版物上数字用法》. China Guojia Biaozhun. https://journals.usst.edu.cn/uploadfile/file/GBT%2015835-2011%E3%80%8A%E5%87%BA%E7%89%88%E7%89%A9%E4%B8%8A%E6%95%B0%E5%AD%97%E7%94%A8%E6%B3%95%E3%80%8B.pdf
20. Book: Lunde, Ken. CJKV Information Processing. 2009. O'Reilly. 978-0-596-51447-1. 633–634.