unicode-charnames

This package is built for Unicode version 16.0, released in September 2024.

The library provides:

A function to retrieve the character name (the normative “Name” property) or the code point label (for characters without names) for any Unicode character.
A function to get the code point (in the usual 4- to 6-digit hexadecimal format) for a given Unicode character name. The search is case-sensitive and requires an exact match.
A function to search for characters by name. The search is case-insensitive but requires an exact substring match.

The generic term “character name” refers to the Unicode character “Name” property value for an encoded character. For code points that do not have character names (unassigned, reserved code points, and other special code point types), the Unicode standard uses constructed code point labels in angle brackets to represent these characters.

Installation and updates

To install the package, run:

pip install unicode-charnames

To upgrade to the latest version, run:

pip install unicode-charnames --upgrade

Unicode character database (UCD) version

To retrieve the version of the Unicode character database in use:

>>> from unicode_charnames import UCD_VERSION
>>> UCD_VERSION
'16.0.0'

Example usage

    from unicode_charnames import charname, codepoint, search_charnames

    # charname
    for char in '龠💓\u00E5\u0002':
        print(charname(char))
        # CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH-9FA0
        # BEATING HEART
        # LATIN SMALL LETTER A WITH RING ABOVE
        # <control-0002>

    # codepoint
    for name in [
            'LATIN CAPITAL LETTER E WITH ACUTE',
            'SQUARE ERA NAME REIWA',
            'SUPERCALIFRAGILISTICEXPIALIDOCIOUS'
    ]:
        print(codepoint(name))
        # 00C9
        # 32FF
        # None

    # search_charnames
    for x in search_charnames('break'):
        print('\t'.join(x))
        # 00A0    NO-BREAK SPACE
        # 2011    NON-BREAKING HYPHEN
        # 202F    NARROW NO-BREAK SPACE
        # 4DEA    HEXAGRAM FOR BREAKTHROUGH
        # FEFF    ZERO WIDTH NO-BREAK SPACE

Related resource

This library is based on Section 4.8, “Name,” in the Unicode Core Specification, version 16.0.0.

Licenses

The code is licensed under the MIT license.