Kangxi Radicals is a

Unicode block A Unicode block is one of several contiguous ranges of numeric character codes ( code points) of the Unicode character set that are defined by the Unicode Consortium for administrative and documentation purposes. Typically, proposals such as the ...

. In version 3.0 (1999), this separate Kangxi Radicals block was introduced which encodes the 214 radicals in sequence, at U+2F00–2FD5. These are specific code points intended to represent the radical ''qua'' radical, as opposed to the character consisting of the unaugmented radical; thus, U+2F00 represents

radical 1 Radical 1 or radical one () meaning "one" is one of the 6 Kangxi radicals (214 radicals in total) composed of 1 stroke. In the ''Kangxi Dictionary'', there are 42 characters (out of 49,030) to be found under this radical. is also the 1st index ...

while U+4E00 represents the character ''yī'' meaning "one". In addition, the CJK Radicals Supplement block (2E80–2EFF) was introduced, encoding alternative (often positional) forms taken by Kangxi radicals as they appear within specific characters. For example, ⺁ "CJK RADICAL CLIFF" (U+2E81) is a variant of ⼚

radical 27 Radical 27 or radical cliff () meaning "cliff" is one of the 23 Kangxi radicals (214 radicals total) composed of two strokes. In the ''Kangxi Dictionary'', there are 129 characters (out of 49,030) to be found under this radical. is also the 7t ...

(U+2F1A), itself identical in shape to the character consisting of unaugmented radical 27, 厂 "cliff" (U+5382). The

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, wh ...

standard encoded 20,992 characters in version 1.0.1 (1992) in the

CJK Unified Ideographs The Chinese, Japanese and Korean (CJK) scripts share a common background, collectively known as CJK characters. In the process called Han unification, the common (shared) characters were identified and named CJK Unified Ideographs. As of Unicode ...

block (U+4E00–9FFF). This standard followed the Kangxi order of radicals (

at U+4E00, radical 214 at U+9FA0) but did not encode all characters found in the Kangxi dictionary. Individual characters were listed based on their Kangxi radical and number of additional strokes, e.g. U+5382 厂, the unaugmented

meaning "cliff" is listed under "27.0", while U+5383 to U+5386 are listed under "27.2" as they all consist of radical 27 plus two additional strokes. More characters were added in later versions, adding "CJK Unified Ideographs Extensions" A, B, C, D, E and F as of Unicode 12.1 (2019) with further additions planned for Unicode 13.0. Within each "Extension", characters are also ordered by Kangxi radical and additional strokes. The Unicode Consortium maintains the "

Unihan Database Han unification is an effort by the authors of Unicode and the Universal Character Set to map multiple character sets of the Han characters of the so-called CJK languages into a single set of unified characters. Han characters are a feature s ...

", with a
Radical-Stroke-Index
The Unicode

Common Locale Data Repository The Common Locale Data Repository Project, often abbreviated as CLDR, is a project of the Unicode Consortium to provide locale data in XML format for use in computer applications. CLDR contains locale-specific information that an operating syst ...

provides no official

collation Collation is the assembly of written information into a standard order. Many systems of collation are based on numerical order or alphabetical order, or extensions and combinations thereof. Collation is a fundamental element of most office filin ...

(sort order) rule for Unicode CJK characters (short of sorting characters by code point);Ken Whistler, Markus Scherer
Unicode Collation Algorithm, Unicode Technical Standard #10, version 7.0.0
(2014). such collation rules as there are language-specific (such as

JIS X 0208 JIS X 0208 is a 2-byte character set specified as a Japanese Industrial Standards, Japanese Industrial Standard, containing 6879 graphic characters suitable for writing text, place names, personal names, and so forth in the Japanese language. Th ...

for Japanese kanji) and do not include any of the CJK Unified Ideographs Extension characters.

Chart

History

The following Unicode-related documents record the purpose and process of defining specific characters in the Kangxi Radicals block:

References

{{CJK ideographs in Unicode Unicode blocks