<p>the wiki page explains the situation:</p>

<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CJK_Compatibility_Ideographs" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CJK_Compatibility_Ideographs</a></p>

<p>briefly, u+f900 - u+faff is reserved for duplicated characters from south, north korea, taiwan, &amp; japan, slowly for backward compatibility.</p>

<p>fyi, there's another ⼥ (u+2f25), this one is for representing the radical ⼥ only. for normal text usage, the 女 (u+5973) should be used.</p>

<p>have fun :)</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-09-23T13:43:51.457Z
Apparently there are all these points: 20A30,216AC,6C5D,F981
Mou某
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-09-23T13:52:00.637Z
my computer could not display u+20a30, nor u+216ac. code point u+6c5d is 汝, which is another character.
水巷孑蠻
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-09-23T08:38:15.923Z
2016-09-23T08:38:15.923Z
水巷孑蠻
<p>Indeed, this should be a stackoverflow question. </p>

<p>Unicode are mean to put all the world language into a single coding page, it has no intention to unified different language character. Maintaining individual language in different codepage help solve some old encoding-decoding issues. </p>

<p>In fact, there is more <code>repeated</code> unicode character than you can imagine, it is part of language <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homoglyph" rel="nofollow">Homoglyph</a>. For example, a latin "o" , greek "o" and cyrillic "o" looks similar but use their own codepage.</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-09-25T05:31:53.393Z
Not StackOverflow, Super User is more suitable. StackOverflow is only for programming, not for users trying to use/configure/manage/learn their computing environment.
busukxuan
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-09-23T15:13:57.933Z
2016-09-23T15:20:46.933Z
2016-09-23T15:20:46.933Z
mootmoot
<p>Astoundingly, while there are explanations as to why these events happen in general, there is none concerning the actual symbol under question.</p>

<p>U+F981 exists for the reason of Korean standard KS X 1001, the primary Korean standard. It has a peculiar feature: it has multiple actual duplicate characters. For some reason, the standard decided: if a character has N Korean readings, it will be encoded N times, in locations corresponding to all readings.</p>

<p>女 was encoded twice, due to the process of N-erosion in Korean: once, as Row 50 Character 19, with the other starting with [n], for the reading nyeo, another time as Row 69 Character 92, with other the other starting with [yeo], for the reading yeo. Hence, for a backwards compatibility with this standard, Unicode encoded the character once – but added another codepoint at U+F981, to guarantee that the Korean texts typed in some environment where the difference was vital (I don’t know, perhaps to make readings recoverable?), then the Row 50 character goes to the normal one, and the Row 69 one maps to the compatibility one.</p>

<p>There is lots of stuff in Unicode made for backwards compatibility, deal with it.</p>

CC BY-SA 4.0
2019-10-20T17:57:05.640Z
2019-10-20T17:57:05.640Z
Alexander Z.
<p>I wonder if this is even the right place to ask this question but I couldn't figure another place so here I am. What is the difference between these two characters? If none, then why are there two different unicode code points?</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-09-23T07:54:07.893Z
I tagged this as 'font' even though technically this is not related to fonts and I didn't want to (probably couldn't if I wanted) create a new tag.
0fnt
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-09-23T08:08:12.307Z
The former is from CJK Unified Ideographs and the latter CJK Compatibility Ideographs. But I have no idea about the details.
ElpieKay
<fonts>
(女 vs 女): Unicode points U+5973 vs U+F981
# (女 vs 女): Unicode points U+5973 vs U+F981

(Asked by: username_0 on 2016-09-23)

I wonder if this is even the right place to ask this question but I couldn't figure another place so here I am. What is the difference between these two characters? If none, then why are there two different unicode code points?

**Tags:** fonts
> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: I tagged this as 'font' even though technically this is not related to fonts and I didn't want to (probably couldn't if I wanted) create a new tag.  
> **username_1**: The former is from CJK Unified Ideographs and the latter CJK Compatibility Ideographs. But I have no idea about the details.  

---

## 3 answers

### Answer by username_6 on 2019-10-20. Score: 8 | Accepted answer

Astoundingly, while there are explanations as to why these events happen in general, there is none concerning the actual symbol under question.

U+F981 exists for the reason of Korean standard KS X 1001, the primary Korean standard. It has a peculiar feature: it has multiple actual duplicate characters. For some reason, the standard decided: if a character has N Korean readings, it will be encoded N times, in locations corresponding to all readings.

女 was encoded twice, due to the process of N-erosion in Korean: once, as Row 50 Character 19, with the other starting with [n], for the reading nyeo, another time as Row 69 Character 92, with other the other starting with [yeo], for the reading yeo. Hence, for a backwards compatibility with this standard, Unicode encoded the character once – but added another codepoint at U+F981, to guarantee that the Korean texts typed in some environment where the difference was vital (I don’t know, perhaps to make readings recoverable?), then the Row 50 character goes to the normal one, and the Row 69 one maps to the compatibility one.

There is lots of stuff in Unicode made for backwards compatibility, deal with it.


---

### Answer by username_2 on 2016-09-23. Score: 4

the wiki page explains the situation:

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CJK_Compatibility_Ideographs>

briefly, u+f900 - u+faff is reserved for duplicated characters from south, north korea, taiwan, & japan, slowly for backward compatibility.

fyi, there's another ⼥ (u+2f25), this one is for representing the radical ⼥ only. for normal text usage, the 女 (u+5973) should be used.

have fun :)

> **Comments:**
> **username_3**: Apparently there are all these points: 20A30,216AC,6C5D,F981  
> **username_2**: my computer could not display u+20a30, nor u+216ac. code point u+6c5d is 汝, which is another character.  

---

### Answer by username_4 on 2016-09-23. Score: 1

Indeed, this should be a stackoverflow question.

Unicode are mean to put all the world language into a single coding page, it has no intention to unified different language character. Maintaining individual language in different codepage help solve some old encoding-decoding issues.

In fact, there is more `repeated` unicode character than you can imagine, it is part of language [Homoglyph](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homoglyph). For example, a latin "o" , greek "o" and cyrillic "o" looks similar but use their own codepage.

> **Comments:**
> **username_5**: Not StackOverflow, Super User is more suitable. StackOverflow is only for programming, not for users trying to use/configure/manage/learn their computing environment.  

---

