Home U+2600 to U+26FF Miscellaneous Symbols
Glyph for U+269A
Source: Noto Sans Symbols

U+269A Staff of Hermes

U+269A was added to Unicode in version 4.1 (2005). It belongs to the block U+2600 to U+26FF Miscellaneous Symbols in the U+0000 to U+FFFF Basic Multilingual Plane.

This character is a Other Symbol and is commonly used, that is, in no specific script.

The glyph is not a composition. It has a Neutral East Asian Width. In bidirectional context it acts as Other Neutral and is not mirrored. In text U+269A behaves as Alphabetic regarding line breaks. It has type Other for sentence and Other for word breaks. The Grapheme Cluster Break is Any.

The Wikipedia has the following information about this codepoint:

The caduceus (☤; ; Latin: cādūceus, from Greek: κηρύκειον kērū́keion "herald's wand, or staff") is the staff carried by Hermes in Greek mythology and consequently by Hermes Trismegistus in Greco-Egyptian mythology. The same staff was also borne by heralds in general, for example by Iris, the messenger of Hera. It is a short staff entwined by two serpents, sometimes surmounted by wings. In Roman iconography, it was often depicted being carried in the left hand of Mercury, the messenger of the gods.

Some accounts suggest that the oldest known imagery of the caduceus has its roots in Mesopotamia with the Sumerian god Ningishzida; his symbol, a staff with two snakes intertwined around it, dates back to 4000 BC to 3000 BC.

As a symbolic object, it represents Hermes (or the Roman Mercury), and by extension trades, occupations, or undertakings associated with the god. In later Antiquity, the caduceus provided the basis for the astrological symbol representing the planet Mercury. Thus, through its use in astrology, alchemy, and astronomy it has come to denote the planet and elemental metal of the same name. It is said the wand would wake the sleeping and send the awake to sleep. If applied to the dying, their death was gentle; if applied to the dead, they returned to life.

By extension of its association with Mercury and Hermes, the caduceus is also a recognized symbol of commerce and negotiation, two realms in which balanced exchange and reciprocity are recognized as ideals. This association is ancient, and consistent from the Classical period to modern times. The caduceus is also used as a symbol representing printing, again by extension of the attributes of Mercury (in this case associated with writing and eloquence).

Although the Rod of Asclepius, which has only one snake and is never depicted with wings, is the traditional and more widely used symbol of medicine, the Caduceus is sometimes used by healthcare organizations. Given that the caduceus is primarily a symbol of commerce and other non-medical symbology, many healthcare professionals disapprove of this usage.

Representations

System Representation
9882
UTF-8 E2 9A 9A
UTF-16 26 9A
UTF-32 00 00 26 9A
URL-Quoted %E2%9A%9A
HTML-Escape ⚚
Wrong windows-1252 Mojibake ⚚

Elsewhere

Complete Record

Property Value
Age 4.1 (2005)
Unicode Name STAFF OF HERMES
Unicode 1 Name
Block Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs
General Category Other Symbol
Script Common
Bidirectional Category Other Neutral
Combining Class Not Reordered
Decomposition Type None
Decomposition Mapping Glyph for U+269A Staff of Hermes
Lowercase
Simple Lowercase Mapping Glyph for U+269A Staff of Hermes
Lowercase Mapping Glyph for U+269A Staff of Hermes
Uppercase
Simple Uppercase Mapping Glyph for U+269A Staff of Hermes
Uppercase Mapping Glyph for U+269A Staff of Hermes
Simple Titlecase Mapping Glyph for U+269A Staff of Hermes
Titlecase Mapping Glyph for U+269A Staff of Hermes
Case Folding Glyph for U+269A Staff of Hermes
ASCII Hex Digit
Alphabetic
Bidi Control
Bidi Mirrored
Composition Exclusion
Case Ignorable
Changes When Casefolded
Changes When Casemapped
Changes When NFKC Casefolded
Changes When Lowercased
Changes When Titlecased
Changes When Uppercased
Cased
Full Composition Exclusion
Default Ignorable Code Point
Dash
Deprecated
Diacritic
Emoji Modifier Base
Emoji Component
Emoji Modifier
Emoji Presentation
Emoji
Extender
Extended Pictographic
FC NFKC Closure Glyph for U+269A Staff of Hermes
Grapheme Cluster Break Any
Grapheme Base
Grapheme Extend
Grapheme Link
Hex Digit
Hyphen
ID Continue
ID Start
IDS Binary Operator
IDS Trinary Operator and
Ideographic
Indic Mantra Category
Indic Positional Category NA
Indic Syllabic Category Other
Jamo Short Name
Join Control
Logical Order Exception
Math
Noncharacter Code Point
NFC Quick Check Yes
NFD Quick Check Yes
NFKC Casefold Glyph for U+269A Staff of Hermes
NFKC Quick Check Yes
NFKD Quick Check Yes
Other Alphabetic
Other Default Ignorable Code Point
Other Grapheme Extend
Other ID Continue
Other ID Start
Other Lowercase
Other Math
Other Uppercase
Prepended Concatenation Mark
Pattern Syntax
Pattern White Space
Quotation Mark
Regional Indicator
Radical
Sentence Break Other
Soft Dotted
Sentence Terminal
Terminal Punctuation
Unified Ideograph
Variation Selector
Word Break Other
White Space
XID Continue
XID Start
Expands On NFC
Expands On NFD
Expands On NFKC
Expands On NFKD
Bidi Paired Bracket Glyph for U+269A Staff of Hermes
Bidi Paired Bracket Type None
East Asian Width Neutral
Hangul Syllable Type Not Applicable
ISO 10646 Comment
Joining Group No_Joining_Group
Joining Type Non Joining
Line Break Alphabetic
Numeric Type None
Numeric Value not a number
Simple Case Folding Glyph for U+269A Staff of Hermes
Script Extension
Vertical Orientation U