U+017D "Ž" Latin Capital Letter Z with Caron Unicode Character
U+017D "Ž" Latin Capital Letter Z with Caron is a distinct letter used in several languages, including Czech, Slovak, Slovenian, Croatian, and Baltic languages like Lithuanian and Latvian, where it represents a voiced postalveolar fricative sound similar to the "s" in "measure" or the "zh" in "Zhivago". This character is formed by adding a caron, or háček, a small diacritical mark resembling an inverted circumflex, above the standard uppercase Z, and it appears in the 32nd to 34th positions of these alphabets, often in a sequence with its lowercase counterpart "ž" (U+017E). As part of the Latin Extended-A block, it is essential for proper orthography and distinguishes minimal pairs in languages like Czech, where "žít" (to live) contrasts with "zít" (to yawn), and it has also been adopted in transliteration systems for Slavic languages such as Russian or Macedonian.
General Properties
| Code Point | U+017D |
| Version Added | 1.1 |
| Name | Latin Capital Letter Z with Caron |
| Unicode 1.0 Name | Latin Capital Letter Z Hacek |
| Block | Latin Extended-A |
| General Category | Uppercase Letter |
| Canonical Combining Class | Not Reordered |
| Bidirectional Class | Left To Right |
| Decomposition Type | Canonical |
| Decomposition Mapping | "Z" U+005A Latin Capital Letter Z "̌" U+030C Combining Caron |
Encodings
| HTML Decimal Encoding | Ž |
| HTML Hex Encoding | Ž |
| UTF-8 Encoding | 0xC5 0xBD |
| UTF-16 Encoding | 0x017D |
| UTF-32 Encoding | 0x0000017D |
| C/C++/Java Escape | \u017d |
Unicode Properties
| NFC Quick Check | Yes |
| NFKC Quick Check | Yes |
| Numeric Type | None |
| Numeric Value | NaN |
| Line Break | Alphabetic |
| Uppercase | Yes |
| Simple Lowercase Code Point | "ž" U+017E Latin Small Letter Z with Caron |
| Lowercase Code Point | "ž" U+017E Latin Small Letter Z with Caron |
| Simple Case Folding | "ž" U+017E Latin Small Letter Z with Caron |
| Case Folding | "ž" U+017E Latin Small Letter Z with Caron |
| Cased | Yes |
| Changes When Casefolded | Yes |
| Changes When Casemapped | Yes |
| Changes When Lowercased | Yes |
| Changes When NFKC Casefolded | Yes |
| NFKC Casefold | "ž" U+017E Latin Small Letter Z with Caron |
| NFKC Simple Casefold | "ž" U+017E Latin Small Letter Z with Caron |
| Script | Latin |
| Script Extensions | Latin |
| Indic Syllabic Category | Other |
| ID Start | Yes |
| XID Start | Yes |
| ID Continue | Yes |
| XID Continue | Yes |
| Alphabetic | Yes |
| Vertical Orientation | Rotated |
| Grapheme Base | Yes |
| Grapheme Cluster Break | Other |
| Word Break | Alphabetic letter |
| Sentence Break | Upper |