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In a similar vein, there are kanji (Chinese characters) with unknown origins called "ghost kanji". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JIS_X_0208#Kanji_from_unknown_...


I like how the kanji in the table are classified into 3 categories: Unknown, Source unclear and Unidentifiable.


and those that belong to the emperor, I presume.


Except those that are drawn with a fine camelhair brush.


> In particular, 妛 was probably created when printers tried to create 𡚴 by cutting and pasting 山 and 女 together.

It's crazy to think that a lot of written Kanji and Hanzi come from print drifting and a small accumulation of errors, similar to how many new words are formed in spoken language.


There are also character variants. Sometimes between CJK, but also historic. I attended a conference at Academica Sinica in Taipei with knowledgeable academic sorts circa 2001 who had apparently elucidated various issues with Unicode unification coming from the full range of prior encodings, fonts, dictionaries, input systems and mechanical typesetting systems.


Since I just returned home to the US from a visit to Japan, I found that fascinating reading.




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