U+3045 "ぅ" Hiragana Letter Small U Unicode Character
Unicode Version 17.0
ぅ
U+3045 "ぅ" Hiragana Letter Small U is a typographic variant of the standard hiragana character "う" (u), used primarily in the Japanese writing system to modify the sounds of preceding characters or to create distinct phonetic sequences that do not occur with the full-sized version. It is most commonly employed in combination with other kana to represent contracted sounds, such as in the syllable "くぅ" (kuu) or as part of longer rendaku forms, and it also appears in loanwords and onomatopoeia to indicate a shorter, clipped pronunciation of the "u" vowel. This small character helps achieve precise phonetic representation in Japanese text, particularly in cases where a subtle difference in sound length or vowel quality is important.
General Properties
| Code Point | U+3045 |
| Version Added | 1.1 |
| Name | Hiragana Letter Small U |
| Block | Hiragana |
| General Category | Other Letter |
| Canonical Combining Class | Not Reordered |
| Bidirectional Class | Left To Right |
Encodings
| HTML Decimal Encoding | ぅ |
| HTML Hex Encoding | ぅ |
| UTF-8 Encoding | 0xE3 0x81 0x85 |
| UTF-16 Encoding | 0x3045 |
| UTF-32 Encoding | 0x00003045 |
| C/C++/Java Escape | \u3045 |