<p>From the point of view of computing, rather than linguistics, character sets are standardized and revised by committee.</p>

<ol>
<li><p>In the PRC, the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GB_2312">GB2312</a> character set standard has evolved into <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBK">GBK</a>:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>With the arrival of GBK, certain names with characters formerly unrepresentable, like the "róng"(镕) character in former Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji's name, are now representable.</p>
  
  <p>In 1995, China National Information Technology Standardization Technical Committee set down the Chinese Internal Code Specification (汉字内码扩展规范), Version 1.0, known as GBK 1.0, which is a slight extension of Codepage 936. The newly added 95 characters were not found in GB 13000.1-1993, and were provisionally assigned Unicode PUA code points.</p>
</blockquote>

<p>… and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GB_18030">GB18030</a>:</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Some characters used by ethnic minorities in China, such as Mongolian characters and Tibetan characters (GB 16959-1997 and GB/T 20542-2006), have been added as well, which accounts for the renaming of the standard.</p>
</blockquote></li>
<li><p>In Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau, which use traditional characters, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big5">Big5</a> has long been used as the standard.  It is named after the consortium of five Taiwanese companies that developed it.  However, various software makers developed their own variants of the original standard.  In addition,</p>

<blockquote>
  <p>Cantonese uses many archaic and some colloquial Chinese characters that were not available in the normal Big5 character set. To solve this problem, the Hong Kong Government created the Big5 extensions Government Chinese Character Set in 1995 and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HKSCS">Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set</a> in 1999. The Hong Kong extensions were commonly distributed as a patch. It is still being distributed as a patch by Microsoft, but a full Unicode font is also available from the Hong Kong Government’s web site.</p>
</blockquote></li>
<li>Both standards are being supplanted by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode">Unicode</a> or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Character_Set">ISO 10646</a>.  The evolution of the Unicode standard is driven by the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_Consortium">Unicode Consortium</a>, whose members include software companies and government organizations.</li>
</ol>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-02-15T03:16:39.373Z
an equally excellent answer, from a different perspective. i wish i could accept both.  thank you.
Master Sparkles
CC BY-SA 4.0
2018-07-13T13:29:01.570Z
Ill just upvote both for you :-)
Mister Verleg
CC BY-SA 3.0
2015-02-15T02:38:41.273Z
2015-02-15T02:38:41.273Z
200_success
<p>For example there are characters such as 熵 which as far as I know only means one thing - in this case entropy - and which have to have been deliberately added by some person or organization. An earlier example is the character 逛, which according to evidence in manuscripts of Dream of the Red Chamber was added to the language fairly recently, in the 18th century.</p>

<p>My question is: who / what at presently decides what new characters get added to the language? If we were to petition some one or thing to get the 招財進寶 rebus added to the language as an actual character, who would we petition? And do new characters added to the language have to have a pronunciation?</p>

<characters><vocabulary>
How do new Chinese characters get added to the language?
# How do new Chinese characters get added to the language?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2015-02-14)

For example there are characters such as 熵 which as far as I know only means one thing - in this case entropy - and which have to have been deliberately added by some person or organization. An earlier example is the character 逛, which according to evidence in manuscripts of Dream of the Red Chamber was added to the language fairly recently, in the 18th century.

My question is: who / what at presently decides what new characters get added to the language? If we were to petition some one or thing to get the 招財進寶 rebus added to the language as an actual character, who would we petition? And do new characters added to the language have to have a pronunciation?

**Tags:** characters, vocabulary


---

## 1 answers

### Answer by username_1 on 2015-02-15. Score: 15

From the point of view of computing, rather than linguistics, character sets are standardized and revised by committee.

1. In the PRC, the [GB2312](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GB_2312) character set standard has evolved into [GBK](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GBK):

   > With the arrival of GBK, certain names with characters formerly unrepresentable, like the "róng"(镕) character in former Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji's name, are now representable.
   >
   > In 1995, China National Information Technology Standardization Technical Committee set down the Chinese Internal Code Specification (汉字内码扩展规范), Version 1.0, known as GBK 1.0, which is a slight extension of Codepage 936. The newly added 95 characters were not found in GB 13000.1-1993, and were provisionally assigned Unicode PUA code points.

   … and [GB18030](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GB_18030):

   > Some characters used by ethnic minorities in China, such as Mongolian characters and Tibetan characters (GB 16959-1997 and GB/T 20542-2006), have been added as well, which accounts for the renaming of the standard.
2. In Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau, which use traditional characters, [Big5](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big5) has long been used as the standard. It is named after the consortium of five Taiwanese companies that developed it. However, various software makers developed their own variants of the original standard. In addition,

   > Cantonese uses many archaic and some colloquial Chinese characters that were not available in the normal Big5 character set. To solve this problem, the Hong Kong Government created the Big5 extensions Government Chinese Character Set in 1995 and [Hong Kong Supplementary Character Set](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HKSCS) in 1999. The Hong Kong extensions were commonly distributed as a patch. It is still being distributed as a patch by Microsoft, but a full Unicode font is also available from the Hong Kong Government’s web site.
3. Both standards are being supplanted by [Unicode](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode) or [ISO 10646](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Character_Set). The evolution of the Unicode standard is driven by the [Unicode Consortium](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_Consortium), whose members include software companies and government organizations.

> **Comments:**
> **username_0**: an equally excellent answer, from a different perspective. i wish i could accept both.  thank you.  
> **username_2**: Ill just upvote both for you :-)  

---

