Han character


Han character

(character)(From the Han dynasty, 206 B.C.E to 25 C.E.) Oneof the set of glyphs common to Chinese (where they arecalled "hanzi"), Japanese (where they are called kanji), andKorean (where they are called hanja).

Han characters are generally described as "ideographic", i.e.,picture-writing; but see the reference below.

Modern Korean, Chinese and Japanese fonts may represent agiven Han character as somewhat different glyphs. However, inthe formulation of Unicode, these differences were folded,in order to conserve the number of code positions necessaryfor all of CJK. This unification is referred to as "HanUnification", with the resulting character repertoiresometimes referred to as "Unihan".

Unihan reference at the Unicode Consortium.

[John DeFrancis, "The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy",University of Hawaii Press, 1984].