Broad On

Broad On (Ѻ ѻ; italics: Ѻ ѻ) is a positional and orthographical variant of the Cyrillic letter O (О о), which has the historical name On (онъ, onŭ) (these names are still in use in the Church Slavonic alphabet).

Broad On is used only in the Church Slavonic language. In its alphabet (in primers and grammar books), broad and regular shapes of О/о share the same position. Uppercase is typically represented by broad Ѻ, and lowercase is either regular о or dual: both broad ѻ and regular о (in the same way as Greek uppercase Σ is accompanied with two lowercases σ, ς). Phonetically, broad Ѻ/ѻ is the same as regular О/о.

In standard Church Slavonic orthography (since the middle of the 17th century till present time), the broad shape of letter On is used instead of the regular shape of the same letter in the following cases:

• as the first letter of a word's root:
  • in the initial position (ѻгнь, ѻтрокъ),
  • after a prefix (праѻтецъ),
  • in compound words (ѻбоюдуѻстрый),
• in two geographical names (іѻрданъ—Jordan River, іѻппіа—city of Jaffa) and their derivatives,
• as the numerical sign to represent the number 70.

(However, Church Slavonic editions printed outside Russian Empire have often ignored the last rule and used regular о as the numerical sign).

Name

Broad On has no standard traditional name. The names used in literature (broad/wide/round/initial on/o etc.) are just shape-based or functional descriptions. Now the character is often being referred to by its conventional Unicode name "Round Omega",^[1] the fact that may lead to certain misunderstanding, because the Cyrillic letter Omega is a completely different letter; in particular, its numerical value is 800, not 70.

Computing codes

References

1. ^ "Cyrillic: Range: 0400–04FF". The Unicode Standard, Version 6.0. 2010. p. 41. http://unicode.org/charts/PDF/U0400.pdf. Retrieved 2011-06-01.