Old Italic Alphabet Table
| Glyph | Unicode name | Note |
|---|---|---|
| ๐ | Old Italic Letter A | – |
| ๐ | Old Italic Letter BE | – |
| ๐ | Old Italic Letter KE | – |
| ๐ | Old Italic Letter DE | – |
| ๐ | Old Italic Letter E | – |
| ๐ | Old Italic Letter VE | – |
| ๐ | Old Italic Letter ZE | – |
| ๐ | Old Italic Letter HE | – |
| ๐ | Old Italic Letter THE | – |
| ๐ | Old Italic Letter I | – |
| ๐ | Old Italic Letter KA | – |
| ๐ | Old Italic Letter EL | – |
| ๐ | Old Italic Letter EM | – |
| ๐ | Old Italic Letter EN | – |
| ๐ | Old Italic Letter ESH | – |
| ๐ | Old Italic Letter O | – |
| ๐ | Old Italic Letter PE | – |
| ๐ | Old Italic Letter SHE | – |
| ๐ | Old Italic Letter KU | – |
| ๐ | Old Italic Letter ER | – |
| ๐ | Old Italic Letter ES | – |
| ๐ | Old Italic Letter TE | – |
| ๐ | Old Italic Letter U | – |
| ๐ | Old Italic Letter EKS | – |
| ๐ | Old Italic Letter PHE | – |
| ๐ | Old Italic Letter KHE | – |
| ๐ | Old Italic Letter EF | – |
| ๐ | Old Italic Letter ERS | – |
| ๐ | Old Italic Letter CHE | – |
| ๐ | Old Italic Letter II | – |
| ๐ | Old Italic Letter UU | – |
| ๐ | Old Italic Letter ESS | added in Unicode 7.0 (2014) |
| ๐ญ | Old Italic Letter YE | added in Unicode 10.0 (2017) |
| ๐ฎ | Old Italic Letter NORTHERN TSE | added in Unicode 10.0 (2017) |
| ๐ฏ | Old Italic Letter SOUTHERN TSE | added in Unicode 10.0 (2017) |
| ๐ | Old Italic Numeral One | value 1 |
| ๐ก | Old Italic Numeral Five | value 5 |
| ๐ข | Old Italic Numeral Ten | value 10 |
| ๐ฃ | Old Italic Numeral Fifty | value 50 |
The Old Italic scripts are a family of alphabets used on the Italian Peninsula between about 700 and 100 BC, and their most famous member is the Etruscan alphabet - the immediate ancestor of the Latin alphabet, which Wikipedia notes is used today by more than 100 languages, including English. Every time you read this sentence you are reading a great-grandchild of these letterforms.
The family’s origin story is a colonial transplant: Greek letters from the Euboean colonies of Cumae and Ischia in the Gulf of Naples (8th century BC) passed to the Etruscans, who added C, Q and the VH/HV cluster for sounds Greek lacked, then spread their alphabet across Italy as the peninsula’s leading power. The same family later seeded Northern Europe: the runic alphabets are believed to derive from one Old Italic alphabet by the 2nd century AD.
The table below lists the entire Unicode block (U+10300–U+1032F): 35 letter codepoints and 4 numerals (1, 5, 10, 50), with 9 codepoints unassigned. One codepoint serves several languages - Etruscan, Oscan, Umbrian and others - each with its own letterform, and the writing direction flips freely between right-to-left, left-to-right and boustrophedon.
How to use
- Read the glyph column as a shared inventory, not a single alphabet: the block assigns one codepoint per letter slot, and Etruscan, Oscan, Umbrian and the rest each render it with their own form - so the same codepoint can look different depending on the language font you use. Wikipedia’s reference table marks mirrored variants with [←] and [→] arrows for right-to-left and left-to-right shapes.
- Use the Note column as the version history: Unicode 3.1 (March 2002) encoded the first 35 codepoints, U+1031F arrived with version 7.0 (2014), and U+1032D–1032F came with version 10.0 (2017) - the late rows are the southern archaic letters. The four numeral rows carry their values 1, 5, 10 and 50, the classic Mediterranean tally set.
- For direction, follow the language and the century, not a fixed rule: writing direction varies by language and even by time period, and most scholars transcribe left-to-right, which is also the Unicode default - the code chart glyphs are shown left-to-right even where the original inscriptions run the other way.
Frequently asked questions
Did the latin alphabet really come from the etruscans?
Yes - by way of Greek. Wikipedia’s account: 21 of the 26 archaic Etruscan letters were adopted for Old Latin from the 7th century BC, either directly from the Cumaean alphabet or via archaic Etruscan forms. Curiously, Latin kept B, D, K, O, Q and X that the classical Etruscan alphabet had dropped, and retained some Greek letters the Etruscans abandoned early. The Etruscan step in between is why Latin letterforms look the way they do.
Where did the etruscans get their alphabet?
From Greek colonists: the consensus derives the Etruscan alphabet from the Euboean Greek colonies of Cumae and Ischia (Pithekoussai) in the Gulf of Naples in the 8th century BC - an alphabet also called Cumaean, after Cumae, or Chalcidian, after the metropolis Chalcis. The 1957-58 excavations at Veii support the contact, unearthing Greek pottery that proves ties between Etruscan Veii and the colonies since the second half of the 8th century.
Which direction was old italic written?
All of them, at different times: right-to-left, left-to-right and boustrophedon (literally “ox-turning”, alternating direction each line) all appear, varying by language and even by time period. Most scholars transcribe left-to-right, that is the Unicode default, and the Unicode code chart shows the glyphs left-to-right for simplicity - a reminder that the chart is a scholarly normalization, not how every stone actually reads.
Did the runes come from old italic?
That is the leading account: the runic alphabets of Northern Europe are believed to have been separately derived from one of the Old Italic alphabets by the 2nd century AD. It makes the family a two-continent exporter - south into Latin, north into runes. Old Hungarian only looks runic; its ancestry runs east to the Old Turkic script instead.
Why does the unicode block only have 39 codepoints?
Because it encodes letter slots, not every variant of every language: 35 letters plus 4 numerals cover the shared inventory, with each language choosing its own glyph per slot. The block also grew slowly - Unicode 3.1 (2002) encoded 35 codepoints, version 7.0 added U+1031F in 2014, and version 10.0 added U+1032D–1032F in 2017 for the southern archaic letters. Nine slots remain unassigned, reserved by the block’s 48-codepoint span.