U+16C6 "ᛆ" Runic Letter Short-Twig-Ar A Unicode Character
Unicode Version 17.0
ᛆ
U+16C6 "ᛆ" Runic Letter Short-Twig-Ar A is a runic symbol belonging to the Younger Futhark, specifically the short-twig variant used primarily in medieval Scandinavia for inscriptions on wood and stone. It represents the "a" sound and is a simplified, branch-like form of the earlier Elder Futhark rune Ansuz. This character appears in historic Nordic writing systems, where it often marked the vowel /a/ or /ɑ/ and was part of a streamlined alphabet adapted for quicker carving. In modern digital contexts, it is encoded in Unicode’s Runic block to preserve and facilitate the study of Old Norse and related texts.
General Properties
| Code Point | U+16C6 |
| Version Added | 3.0 |
| Name | Runic Letter Short-Twig-Ar A |
| Block | Runic |
| General Category | Other Letter |
| Canonical Combining Class | Not Reordered |
| Bidirectional Class | Left To Right |
Encodings
| HTML Decimal Encoding | ᛆ |
| HTML Hex Encoding | ᛆ |
| UTF-8 Encoding | 0xE1 0x9B 0x86 |
| UTF-16 Encoding | 0x16C6 |
| UTF-32 Encoding | 0x000016C6 |
| C/C++/Java Escape | \u16c6 |