HEBREW HE-WITH-ADNY-INSIDE

[Mark E. Shoulson]

I don't think there's any use of it outside of being the last letter in 
the Tetragrammaton (except... not always the last letter... I was 
looking at a prayer-book this morning... see below.)  Encoding it as you 
suggest would be somewhat closer to my original proposal back in 1998, 
of HEBREW TETRAGRAMMATON.

The thing is, it isn't QUITE always the last letter, kinda...  I think 
there's an example in one of the papers I linked, but Sephardic 
prayer-books (which is pretty much the only place I've seen this to 
begin with) sometimes use different vowel-points on the Tetragrammaton, 
presumably for Kabbalistic reasons.  So you'll often see it pointed as 
normal, יְהֹוָה, SHEVA, HOLAM, QAMATS (some room to argue whether the 
HOLAM is on the HE or the VAV, but it doesn't really matter.), but then 
you'll see a paragraph where it's יַהַוַהַ the first time and יֵהֵוֵהֵ 
the second time and יִהִוִהִ and so on... and it _definitely_ also 
appears as יוּהוּווּהוּ, apparently considering the shuruk, וּ to be a 
vowel and not a "letter" (I do not see יוֹהוֹווֹהוֹ even though the 
"holam maleh" is also a vowel, I guess because holam maleh and holam 
haser are the same vowel, and יֹהֹוֹהֹ (which does occur) suffices.  But 
אוּ is not the same vowel as אֻ (qubuts), at least not classically: one 
is considered long and one short.)

If, as I was thinking in the original 1998 proposal, we consider all 
these to be glyphic variants of each other, then we could encode it as 
you suggest, and it would be essentially a special case (or set of 
special cases) of my original proposal, much like U+05EF YOD TRIANGLE ׯ 
became.  That might not be a bad idea; my proposal was seen as trying to 
take things too far, and maybe it was, and smaller solutions are 
warranted.  Maybe it should still have compatibility decomposition to 
YOD HE VAV HE for searching and equivalence purposes?

Mmf, having trouble reaching the dkuug site; 
https://www.evertype.com/standards/tetra/tetra.html is a link to Michael 
Everson's site with the original proposal.  It shows a scanned example 
of different vowel-pointing, and mentions and shows a non-scanned 
example of the "eight-letter tetragrammaton", with וּ as the vowel, but 
it doesn't show an actual occurrence of that in scanned text.  I can 
easily supply that, though.

(I have never seen this usage in an instance of the Tetragrammaton that 
is meant to be pronounced ELOHIM.  I don't know if it's done or how.)

~mark

On 4/20/24 14:18, Simon Montagu via Unicode wrote:
> Is there any use case for this glyph except as the last letter of the 
> Tetragrammaton? Does it make sense to encode it separately rather than 
> the whole combination HEBREW TETRAGRAMMATON WITH ADNY INSIDE THE HE?
>
> On 18/04/2024 04:20, Mark E. Shoulson via Unicode wrote:
>> Wow, not a peep about this?  Surely a group this opinionated would 
>> have something to say.  I guess I should propose this, since it's in 
>> use? Probably would have a compatibility equivalence to just plain 
>> HEBREW LETTER HE.
>>
>> ~mark
>>
>> On 4/1/24 17:39, Mark E. Shoulson via Unicode wrote:
>>> Looking waaaay back to my opus (with Michael Everson) of 1998, 
>>> http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc2/wg2/docs/n1740/n1740.htm, I call to 
>>> attention one particular case mentioned there: the case where the 
>>> second HEBREW LETTER HE of the Tetragrammaton is made very wide and 
>>> another Holy Name (Adonay, ALEF-DALET-NUN-YOD) is printed in smaller 
>>> letters inside it. As mentioned last century, this is even now 
>>> (well, then) commonly met with, especially in Sephardic prayer books.
>>>
>>> I mention it because I've found a bunch of professional Hebrew fonts 
>>> which have a glyph for this special character.  Take a look at any 
>>> one of many (but not all) of the offerings of the Samtype Foundry at 
>>> https://www.myfonts.com/collections/samtype-foundry and you'll see 
>>> what I mean.  Sometimes it's visible in the sample image, sometimes 
>>> it isn't even though it's in the font.  They seem to be placing the 
>>> glyph at codepoint U+FB50, which is ARABIC LETTER ALEF WASLA 
>>> ISOLATED FORM, probably because it's the next character after the 
>>> extended Hebrew code-block that ends at U+FB4F HEBREW LIGATURE ALEF 
>>> LAMED and because, being in an Arabic codeblock, it has RTL 
>>> directionality (while the PUA I think has LTR directionality, which 
>>> is most inconvenient.)
>>>
>>> So it seems that this really is a thing being used by typefounders 
>>> even now.  Probably should be encoded, yes?  My rationale from 1998 
>>> of encoding the Tetragrammaton as a glyph in itself was apparently 
>>> not accepted, though after a later paper, 
>>> https://unicode.org/L2/L2015/15092-hebew-nomina-sacra.pdf and some 
>>> discussion, the YOD TRIANGLE U+05EF was encoded.  Perhaps this 
>>> should be too?  I guess as a variant of HE perhaps?  (the name in 
>>> the subject-header is not meant as a serious proposal for the 
>>> glyph-name, though this letter is actually serious, despite the date.)
>>>
>>> ~mark
>>