Old Italic (Unicode block)

Old Italic is a Unicode block containing a unified repertoire of several Old Italic scripts used in various parts of Italy starting about 700 BCE, including the Etruscan alphabet and others that were derived from it (or cognate with it). All those languages went extinct by about the 1st century BCE; except Latin, which however evolved its own Latin alphabet that is covered by other Unicode blocks.

Old Italic
Range	U+10300..U+1032F (48 code points)
Plane	SMP
Scripts	Old Italic
Major alphabets	Etruscan Faliscan Oscan Umbrian South Picene
Assigned	39 code points
Unused	9 reserved code points
Unicode version history
3.1 (2001)	35 (+35)
7.0 (2014)	36 (+1)
10.0 (2017)	39 (+3)
Unicode documentation
Code chart ∣ Web page
Note: [1][2]

Graphic board for the Unicode block Old Italic. Hatched fields are unoccupied code points.

Unification

For each script, each code point denotes zero or more symbols that are believed to be equivalent in that script, even if they had very different shapes. For example, in the Archaic Etruscan alphabet (used from the 7th to 5th century BCE) one letter, apparently derived from the Western Ancient Greek letter theta, could be written as a circle with an inscribed "X", or just as a circle. Those two symbols were mapped to the same code point U+10308, "OLD ITALIC LETTER THE" = "𐌈".

Also, two symbols in different scripts were mapped to the same code point if they appeared to have a genetic or phonemic identity, even if their shapes and/or pronunciations were clearly distinct. For example, the Etruscans used a symbol like "C", believed to have evolved from the Ancient Greek letter gamma, for the "k" sound of their language. That symbol was assumed to be the origin of (or cognate with) a symbol of the Oscan alphabet that looked like "<" and had the sound of "g".^[3] Those two symbols were therefore mapped to the same code point U+10302, "OLD ITALIC LETTER KE" = "𐌂".

Therefore, the appearance of those code points when displayed or printed—as in the table below—is likely to be incorrect, unless they are rendered with a font specifically designed for the particular language and letter style of the text.

Block

Old Italic[1][2] Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF)

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

A

B

C

D

E

F

U+1030x

𐌀

𐌁

𐌂

𐌃

𐌄

𐌅

𐌆

𐌇

𐌈

𐌉

𐌊

𐌋

𐌌

𐌍

𐌎

𐌏

U+1031x

𐌐

𐌑

𐌒

𐌓

𐌔

𐌕

𐌖

𐌗

𐌘

𐌙

𐌚

𐌛

𐌜

𐌝

𐌞

𐌟

U+1032x

𐌠

𐌡

𐌢

𐌣

𐌭

𐌮

𐌯

Notes 1.^ As of Unicode version 16.0 2.^ Grey areas indicate non-assigned code points

History

The following Unicode-related documents record the purpose and process of defining specific characters in the Old Italic block:

Version	Final code points[a]	Count	L2 ID	WG2 ID	Document
3.1	U+10300..1031E, 10320..10323	35	L2/97-101		Jenkins, John H. (1997-05-21), Proposal to add Etruscan to ISO/IEC 10646
			L2/97-195	N1580	Jenkins, John; Everson, Michael (1997-08-16), Etruscan proposal
			L2/97-288	N1603	Umamaheswaran, V. S. (1997-10-24), "8.24.1", Unconfirmed Meeting Minutes, WG 2 Meeting # 33, Heraklion, Crete, Greece, 20 June – 4 July 1997
			L2/98-286	N1703	Umamaheswaran, V. S.; Ksar, Mike (1998-07-02), "8.20.1", Unconfirmed Meeting Minutes, WG 2 Meeting #34, Redmond, WA, USA; 1998-03-16--20
			L2/00-128		Bunz, Carl-Martin (2000-03-01), Scripts from the Past in Future Versions of Unicode
			L2/00-112		de Judicibus, Dario (2000-03-21), Request of change to the proposal to add Etruscan to Unicode/ISO-IEC 10646
			L2/00-133		Küster, Marc; Dohnicht, Marcus (2000-04-18), Altitalische Sprachen
			L2/00-140		Everson, Michael; Jenkins, John; de Judicibus, Dario (2000-04-21), Old Italic 10300--1032F (draft block description)
			L2/00-246		Anderson, Deborah (2000-08-01), Feedback on Old Italic (L2/00-140)
			L2/00-247		Anderson, Deborah (2000-08-02), Addendum to Old Italic feedback in L2/00-246Old Italic feedback: Addendum (on Umbrian and Etruscan glyphs)
			L2/00-115R2		Moore, Lisa (2000-08-08), "Motion 83-M6", Minutes Of UTC Meeting #83
			L2/00-309		Everson, Michael (2000-09-10), Revised glyphs for Old Italic (Irish comments to FCD 10646-2:2000)
			L2/01-050	N2253	Umamaheswaran, V. S. (2001-01-21), "8.1 (Comments from Germany section, Etruscan item)", Minutes of the SC2/WG2 meeting in Athens, September 2000
7.0	U+1031F	1	L2/11-116		Moore, Lisa (2011-05-17), "C.26", UTC #127 / L2 #224 Minutes
			L2/11-146R	N4046	Little, Christopher C. (2011-05-17), Proposal to Encode Additional Old Italic Characters
				N4103	"11.13 Additions to Old Italic script", Unconfirmed minutes of WG 2 meeting 58, 2012-01-03
			L2/12-386	N4395	Little, Christopher C. (2012-11-06), Revised Proposal to Encode Additional Old Italic Characters
10.0	U+1032D..1032F	3		N4403 (pdf, doc)	Umamaheswaran, V. S. (2014-01-28), "Resolution M61.12", Unconfirmed minutes of WG 2 meeting 61, Holiday Inn, Vilnius, Lithuania; 2013-06-10/14
			L2/15-181R	N4669R	Everson, Michael (2015-07-28), Proposal for the addition of three Old Italic characters
			L2/15-187		Moore, Lisa (2015-08-11), "C.4", UTC #144 Minutes
			L2/15-262		Disposition of Comments on ISO/IEC CD 10646 (Ed.5), 2015-10-26
				N4739	"M64.05b", Unconfirmed minutes of WG 2 meeting 64, 2016-08-31
Proposed code points and characters names may differ from final code points and names