Tamil (Unicode block)

See also: Tamil Supplement (Unicode block)

Tamil is a Unicode block containing characters for the Tamil, and Saurashtra languages of Tamil Nadu India, Sri Lanka, Singapore, and Malaysia. In its original incarnation, the code points U+0B82..U+0BCD were a direct copy of the Tamil characters A2-ED from the 1988 ISCII standard. The Devanagari, Bengali, Gurmukhi, Gujarati, Oriya, Telugu, Kannada, and Malayalam blocks were similarly all based on their ISCII encodings.

Tamil
Range	U+0B80..U+0BFF (128 code points)
Plane	BMP
Scripts	Tamil
Major alphabets	Tamil Saurashtra
Assigned	72 code points
Unused	56 reserved code points
Source standards	ISCII
Unicode version history
1.0.0 (1991)	61 (+61)
4.0 (2003)	69 (+8)
4.1 (2005)	71 (+2)
5.1 (2008)	72 (+1)
Unicode documentation
Code chart ∣ Web page
Note:

Block

Tamil[1][2] Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF)

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

A

B

C

D

E

F

U+0B8x

ஂ

ஃ

அ

ஆ

இ

ஈ

உ

ஊ

எ

ஏ

U+0B9x

ஐ

ஒ

ஓ

ஔ

க

ங

ச

ஜ

ஞ

ட

U+0BAx

ண

த

ந

ன

ப

ம

ய

U+0BBx

ர

ற

ல

ள

ழ

வ

ஶ

ஷ

ஸ

ஹ

ா

ி

U+0BCx

ீ

ு

ூ

ெ

ே

ை

ொ

ோ

ௌ

்

U+0BDx

ௐ

ௗ

U+0BEx

௦

௧

௨

௩

௪

௫

௬

௭

௮

௯

U+0BFx

௰

௱

௲

௳

௴

௵

௶

௷

௸

௹

௺

Notes 1.^ As of Unicode version 16.0 2.^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points

History

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

Version	Final code points	Count	UTC ID	L2 ID	WG2 ID	Document
1.0.0	U+0B82..0B83, 0B85..0B8A, 0B8E..0B90, 0B92..0B95, 0B99..0B9A, 0B9C, 0B9E..0B9F, 0BA3..0BA4, 0BA8..0BAA, 0BAE..0BB5, 0BB7..0BB9, 0BBE..0BC2, 0BC6..0BC8, 0BCA..0BCD, 0BD7, 0BE7..0BF2	61	UTC/1991-056			Whistler, Ken, Indic Charts: Devanagari, Bengali, Gurmukhi, Gujarati, Oriya, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam
			UTC/1991-057			Whistler, Ken, Indic names list
			UTC/1991-048B			Whistler, Ken (1991-03-27), "III. L. Walk In proposals", Draft Minutes from the UTC meeting #46 day 2, 3/27 at Apple
				L2/01-303		Vikas, Om (2001-07-26), Letter from the Government from India on "Draft for Unicode Standard for Indian Scripts"
				L2/01-304		Feedback on Unicode Standard 3.0, 2001-08-02
				L2/01-305		McGowan, Rick (2001-08-08), Draft UTC Response to L2/01-304, "Feedback on Unicode Standard 3.0"
				L2/01-295R		Moore, Lisa (2001-11-06), "Motion 88-M9", Minutes from the UTC/L2 meeting #88, The UTC approves changing the general category type of U+0B83 TAMIL SIGN VISARGA from Mn to Lo.
				L2/01-430R		McGowan, Rick (2001-11-20), UTC Response to L2/01-304, "Feedback on Unicode Standard 3.0"
				L2/05-185		Documentation for KSSA as Non-conjunct Consonant and Conjunct Consonant in Tamil, 2005-07-25
				L2/05-180		Moore, Lisa (2005-08-17), "Tamil (C.12.1), KSSA in Tamil (C.12)", UTC #104 Minutes
				L2/10-108		Moore, Lisa (2010-05-19), "B.10.15 [U+0B83, U+0BC1, U+0BC2]", UTC #123 / L2 #220 Minutes
4.0	U+0BF3..0BFA	8		L2/01-375R	N2381R	Umamaheswaran, V. S. (2001-10-11), Proposal to add eight Tamil symbols
				L2/01-420		Whistler, Ken (2001-10-30), "d. Tamil sign additions", WG2 (Singapore) Resolution Consent Docket for UTC
				L2/01-405R		Moore, Lisa (2001-12-12), "Consensus 89-C23", Minutes from the UTC/L2 meeting in Mountain View, November 6-9, 2001
				L2/02-112	N2421	Umamaheswaran, V. S. (2002-03-15), Feedback on Tamil Symbols in PDAM2-10646-1 from the INFITT WG on Unicode
				L2/02-154	N2403	Umamaheswaran, V. S. (2002-04-22), "7.11", Draft minutes of WG 2 meeting 41, Hotel Phoenix, Singapore, 2001-10-15/19
				L2/12-106		Sharma, Shriramana (2012-03-17), "2. Tamil", Request for editorial updates to various Indic scripts
				L2/12-147		Anderson, Deborah; McGowan, Rick; Whistler, Ken (2012-04-25), "II. TAMIL", Review of Indic-related L2 documents and Recommendations to the UTC
				L2/12-150		Ganesan, Naga (2012-05-01), Tamil credit sign (U+0BF7) glyph shape from Printed Books
				L2/12-180		Manivannan, Mani (2012-05-05), Review of Indic-related L2 documents and Recommendations
				L2/12-384		Ganesan, Naga (2012-06-11), Comments on Tamil fractions and Tamil credit sign
				L2/13-028		Anderson, Deborah; McGowan, Rick; Whistler, Ken; Pournader, Roozbeh (2013-01-28), "19.2", Recommendations to UTC on Script Proposals
					N4480	Sharma, Shriramana (2013-09-06), Request to change two glyphs of existing Tamil symbols
				L2/17-424		A, Srinidhi; A, Sridatta (2017-12-08), Changes to ScriptExtensions.txt for Indic characters for Unicode 11.0
				L2/18-039		Anderson, Deborah; Whistler, Ken; Pournader, Roozbeh; Moore, Lisa; Liang, Hai; Cook, Richard (2018-01-19), "ScriptExtensions.txt changes for Indic", Recommendations to UTC #154 January 2018 on Script Proposals
				L2/18-007		Moore, Lisa (2018-03-19), "Action item 154-A120", UTC #154 Minutes, Make script extension changes in version 11.0 as documented in section 6B, pages 6-9 of L2/18-039.
4.1	U+0BB6	1		L2/03-273		Proposal to add Tamil grantha character SHA, 2003-07-29
				L2/03-278		Bhaskararao, Peri (2003-07-29), Review of a Proposal placed before UTC bearing No. L2/03-273, Proposal to encode Tamil SHA
					N2618	Bhaskararao, Peri (2003-09-14), Review of a Proposal placed before Unicode Technical Committee entitled 'Proposal to add Tamil Letter SHA' (L2/03-273)
	U+0BE6	1		L2/04-073	N2741	Kaplan, Michael (2004-02-01), Proposal to add Tamil Digit Zero
5.1	U+0BD0	1		L2/06-184	N3119	Proposal to add Tamil Om, 2006-04-28
				L2/06-108		Moore, Lisa (2006-05-25), "C.23", UTC #107 Minutes
					N3153 (pdf, doc)	Umamaheswaran, V. S. (2007-02-16), "M49.5c", Unconfirmed minutes of WG 2 meeting 49 AIST, Akihabara, Tokyo, Japan; 2006-09-25/29

See also

• Tamil script
• Tamil Supplement (Unicode block)