The Chinese, Japanese and Korean (also known as 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 , Unicode defines a total of 101,997 characters.
The term ideographs is a misnomer, as the Chinese script is not ideographic but rather logographic, but was chosen for being more common in English.
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 North Korea South Korea Macau Taiwan, liaison member represented by the Taipei Computer Association (TCA) Vietnam Unicode Technical Committee (liaison member, also representing the United States) United Kingdom SAT Daizōkyō Text Database Committee (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 . The total number of characters (268,454) far exceeds the number of encoded CJK unified ideographs (101,997) as many characters have more than one source.
+ CJK unified ideographs by source Member Character count 70,262 17,655 52,560 23,976 21,358 344 59,734 3,409 14,276 SAT 3,715 UTC 1,164 Total 268,454
UTC sources The majority of characters submitted by the UTC to the IRG are derived from Unicode Technical Committee (UTC) documents. 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 () The Great Nom Dictionary () 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) Commercial Press New Dictionary (), Hong Kong Modern Chinese Dictionary (), by Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Linguistics Research Institute, Dictionary Editorial Office Working Group (WG2) documents
Ordering
The ordering of CJK Unified Ideographs within Unicode blocks (not counting those added to the block later) was initially determined by consulting the following four dictionaries. Primarily, they were arranged in Kangxi Dictionary order, with the other dictionaries consulted, in order, for characters not found in the Kangxi Dictionary, to determine which Kangxi Dictionary character they should follow in the ordering.
Kangxi Dictionary Dai Kan-Wa Jiten Hanyu Da Zidian Dae Jaweon
This system is not used for more recently-added Unicode blocks. The Ideographic Research Group no longer uses the Dae Jaweon, nor the Dai Kan-Wa Jiten, in its work. The Kangxi Dictionary and Hanyu Da Zidian are still used both in existing character source references, and as potential replacements for existing source references discovered to be erroneous. Similarly, although a (real or virtual) Kangxi Dictionary index was previously provided as part of the submission data for UTC-source characters, this is no longer the case. Instead, the stroke type of the first residual stroke (first stroke which does not form part of the radical) is supplied with all submitted characters, and used to order characters with the same radical and stroke count within the new Unicode block.
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.
This block is also known as the Unified Repertoire and Ordering (URO), especially when it needs to be differentiated from the other CJK Unified Ideographs blocks.
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,The Unicode Standard 4.0, Appendix A - Han Unification History which was somewhat controversial within East Asia.Suzanne Topping, Since single characters used in more than one of Chinese, Japanese and Korean were coded in the same location, and the modern typographical conventions and handwriting curricula differ slightly between regions (not necessarily along language boundaries—for example, Hong Kong and Taiwan, which both use Traditional Chinese, have slightly different local conventions), the appearance of a selected glyph could depend on the particular font being used. However, the URO applies the source separation rule, meaning that pairs of characters treated as distinct in a character set used as a source for the URO (e.g. JIS X 0208 as used in e.g. Shift JIS) would remain pairs of separate characters in the new Unicode encoding."Chapter 11 - East Asian scripts", The Unicode standard, 4.0.
Using variation selectors, it is possible to specify certain variant CJK ideograms within Unicode. The Adobe-Japan1 character set, which has 14,684 ideographic variation sequences, is an extreme example of the use of variation selectors.PRI 108: Combined registration of the Adobe Japan1 collection and of sequences in that collection
Charts 4E00–62FF, 6300–77FF, 7800–8CFF, 8D00–9FFF.
Sources Note: Most characters appear in multiple sources, so the sum of individual character counts (108,493) is far greater than the number of encoded characters (20,992).
Member Code Source Character count Total G0 GB/T 2312-1980 (formerly GB 2312-80) 6,763 20,939 G1 GB/T 12345-1990 (formerly GB/T 12345-90); Traditional Chinese analogue to GB 2312-80 2,202 G3 GB/T 13131 (unpublished GB/T 7589-1987 unsimplified forms) 4,832 G5 GB/T 13132 (unpublished GB/T 7590-1987 unsimplified forms) 2,844 G7 General Purpose Hanzi List for Modern Chinese Language, and General List of Simplified Hanzi 42 G8 GB/T 8565.2-1988 (formerly GB 8565.2-88) 203 GCA Culture and Art Publishing House Ideographs () 7 GCE Names of newly-discovered chemical elements as assigned by the China National Committee for Terms in Sciences and Technologiesand the China National Language and Character Working Committee () 4 GCESI Characters collected by China Electronics Standardization Institute (中国电子技术标准化研究院) 3 GDM Place name characters from the Public Order Administration, Ministry of Public Security of the People's Republic of China 2 GE GB/T 16500-1998 3,763 GFC Modern Chinese Standard Dictionary () 2 GGFZ Tongyong Guifan Hanzi Zidian () 7 GGT Characters collected by the National Library of China 1 GH GB/T 15564-1995 59 GHZ Hanyu Da Zidian 1 GHZR Hanyu Da Zidian 2nd ed. () 29 GK GB/T 12052-1989 (formerly GB 12052-89) 89 GKJ Terms in Sciences and Technologies approved by the China National Committee for Terms in Sciences and Technologies (CNCTST) 16 GKX Kangxi Dictionary 44 GLK Longkan Shoujian 1 GT Standard Telegraph Codebook (revised), 1983 16 GU No source (the original source reference has been moved) 7 GWY Cultural Heritage Ideographs () 1 GZFY Hanyu Fangyan Dacidian () 1 H Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set, 2008 2,292 15,376 HB0 Computer Chinese Glyph and Character Code Mapping Table, Technical Report 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 J0 JIS X 0208-1990 6,356 18,249 J1 JIS X 0212-1990 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 0213:2004 Level 3 95 J3A JIS X 0213:2004 Level 3 addendum from JIS X 0213:2000 Level 3 7 J4 JIS X 0213:2004 Level 4 301 JARIB ARIB STD-B24 Version 5.1, March 14 2007 3 JMJ Character Information Development and Maintenance Project for e-Government "MojiJoho-Kiban Project" () 5,686 KP0 KPS 9566-97 4,652 15,007 KP1 KPS 10721-2000 10,355 K0 KS X 1001:2004 (formerly KS C 5601-1987) 4,620 15,450 K1 KS X 1002:2001 (formerly KS C 5657-1991) 2,855 K2 KS X 1027-1:2011 (formerly PKS C 5700-1 1994) 7,911 K3 KS X 1027-2:2011 (formerly PKS C 5700-2 1994) 1 K4 KS X 1027-3:2011 (formerly PKS 5700-3:1998) 4 K6 KS X 1027-5:2021 57 KC Korean History On-Line () 1 KU No source (the original source reference has been moved) 1 MA HKSCS-2008 29 200 MB1 Big Five 10 MB2 Big Five 7 MC Macau Supplementary Character Set (MSCS) reference 3 MD Macau Supplementary Character Set (MSCS) horizontal extensions 127 MDH HKSCS-2016 24 T1 CNS 11643-1986 plane 1 5,413 18,385 T2 CNS 11643-1986 plane 2 7,651 T3 CNS 11643-1992 plane 3 4,145 T4 CNS 11643-1992 plane 4 893 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 15 159 V0 TCVN 5773:1993 598 4,808 V1 TCVN 6056:1995 3,305 V2 VHN 01-1998 759 V3 VHN 02-1998 91 V4 Hán Nôm Coded Character Repertoire () 19 VN Vietnamese horizontal and vertical extensions 36 N/A UTC UTC sources 79 79
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 (24,010) is far greater than the number of encoded characters (6,592).