The Youngest Character in Chinese
If readers suppose that the character denoting the 111th chemical element, roentgenium, arose by simplifying the traditional character 錀 and exclaim «nothing remarkable about that!», they are only partly right. The simplified form had never existed, so we could not add it to our dictionary in its simplified form. Moreover, it is absent from the databases of handwriting, phonetic, and other available input methods, and even Chinese authors writing online have to represent it with a combination of two characters, like this:
钅仑
Only typesetters working with characters represented as images can insert into their texts the picture used to illustrate this article.
The history of this character is as follows:
- In December 2006, the competent Chinese authorities approved the Chinese name for roentgenium;
- On January 16, 2007, an application to approve the name of the new chemical element was submitted to China’s State Language Commission;
- On February 8, 2007, the name was approved, and in August 2013 a normative reference of Chinese characters mandatory for use was published, including the character for roentgenium.
Because an ancient character unused in the modern language was chosen to denote roentgenium, its traditional form exists (and a link to its dictionary entry appears in this article), but a simplified form has not yet been created in Chinese character encodings.