<character> (From the Han dynasty, 206 B.C.E to 25 C.E.) One
of the set of glyphs common to Chinese (where they are
called "hanzi"), Japanese (where they are called kanji), and
Korean (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 a
given Han character as somewhat different glyphs. However, in
the formulation of Unicode, these differences were folded,
in order to conserve the number of code positions necessary
for all of CJK. This unification is referred to as "Han
Unification", with the resulting character repertoire
sometimes referred to as "Unihan".
Unihan reference at the Unicode Consortium.
[John DeFrancis, "The Chinese Language: Fact and Fantasy",
University of Hawaii Press, 1984].
(1998-10-18)
Nearby terms:
Hamming distance « Hamming, Richard « hamster « Han character » HAND » hand cruft » Handel
