Aurebesh: U+E890 - U+E8DF

Proposal by Doug Ewell, 2016-06-22

Aurebesh (also called Aurek-Besh) is a Star Wars alphabet developed by Stephen Crane of West End Games from random glyphs originally seen in the film Return of the Jedi (1983). A correspondence between Aurebesh and Latin letters was first published in the Star Wars Miniatures Battles Companion (1994) and later appeared in other games and publications, as well as Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace (1999). A Latin-script display in the original Star Wars film (1977) was retrofitted to Aurebesh for its 2004 DVD release.

The intellectual property for Aurebesh, like other Star Wars material, is owned by Lucasfilm, which has not produced an official Aurebesh font. Nevertheless, numerous fonts have been created and distributed by fans and hobbyists, and the alphabet appears on many Star Wars-themed websites.

General information

The name “Aurebesh” is derived from the names of the first two letters, Aurek and Besh, similar to words like alphabet and abjad. It is typically used to write the Galactic Basic language, which is heard as English in English-language releases of the films.

Aurebesh is a monocase script, written in left-to-right, top-to-bottom lines, without diacritical marks. There are 26 letters corresponding to letters of the English alphabet, plus an additional eight letters corresponding to Latin-script digraphs. The digraphs prevent Aurebesh from being simply a cipher for the Latin script, although they are not always used.

Charts from different sources present the letters ordered in different ways. The most common ordering places the digraphs at the end of the alphabet, so that the letters AUREK (A) through ZEREK (Z) appear consecutively. An alternative ordering intersperses the digraphs with related letters, so that, for example, ENTH (AE) and ONITH (EO) appear after ESK (E). The encoding below follows the first ordering, which is not necessarily an optimal collation order.

There are no official digits, although various fonts do include a set of digits, rendered as either stylized European numerals or as binary, Braille-like combinations of dots. Crane observed that European numerals were shown in the same film contexts as the random Aurebesh letters. A column is reserved in this encoding for a future official set of digits.

Aurebesh has a script-specific set of punctuation marks, added by Crane in 1996. A currency symbol, AUREBESH CREDITS SIGN, was created by Parker Brothers for their Star Wars Monopoly game.

Sources

Crane, Stephen. “Aurebesh Soup: Recipe for a Star Wars Font Phenomenon.” In “Echo Station: Exploring Star Wars Beyond the Daily News” <http://www.echostation.com/features/aurebesh.htm>. Retrieved 2014-06-18.

“Aurebesh—Canon.” Wookieepedia <http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Aurebesh>. Retrieved 2015-07-01.

“Aurebesh alphabet.” Omniglot <http://www.omniglot.com/conscripts/aurekbesh.htm>. Retrieved 2015-07-01.

Encoding structure

The Aurebesh block is divided into the following ranges:

      U+E890 -> U+E8BF  Letters
      U+E8C0 -> U+E8CF  Punctuation and symbols
      U+E8D0 -> U+E8DF  Reserved

Code assignments

U+E890      AUREBESH LETTER AUREK
            = A
U+E891      AUREBESH LETTER BESH
            = B
U+E892      AUREBESH LETTER CRESH
            = C
U+E893      AUREBESH LETTER DORN
            = D
U+E894      AUREBESH LETTER ESK
            = E
U+E895      AUREBESH LETTER FORN
            = F
U+E896      AUREBESH LETTER GREK
            = G
U+E897      AUREBESH LETTER HERF
            = H
U+E898      AUREBESH LETTER ISK
            = I
U+E899      AUREBESH LETTER JENTH
            = J
U+E89A      AUREBESH LETTER KRILL
            = K
U+E89B      AUREBESH LETTER LETH
            = L
U+E89C      AUREBESH LETTER MERN
            = M
U+E89D      AUREBESH LETTER NERN
            = N
U+E89E      AUREBESH LETTER OSK
            = O
U+E89F      AUREBESH LETTER PETH
            = P
U+E8A0      AUREBESH LETTER QEK
            = Q
U+E8A1      AUREBESH LETTER RESH
            = R
U+E8A2      AUREBESH LETTER SENTH
            = S
U+E8A3      AUREBESH LETTER TRILL
            = T
U+E8A4      AUREBESH LETTER USK
            = U
U+E8A5      AUREBESH LETTER VEV
            = V
U+E8A6      AUREBESH LETTER WESK
            = W
U+E8A7      AUREBESH LETTER XESH
            = X
U+E8A8      AUREBESH LETTER YIRT
            = Y
U+E8A9      AUREBESH LETTER ZEREK
            = Z
U+E8AA      AUREBESH LETTER CHEREK
            = CH
U+E8AB      AUREBESH LETTER ENTH
            = AE
U+E8AC      AUREBESH LETTER ONITH
            = EO
U+E8AD      AUREBESH LETTER KRENTH
            = KH
U+E8AE      AUREBESH LETTER NEN
            = NG
U+E8AF      AUREBESH LETTER ORENTH
            = OO
U+E8B0      AUREBESH LETTER SHEN
            = SH
U+E8B1      AUREBESH LETTER THESH
            = TH

U+E8C0      AUREBESH COMMA
U+E8C1      AUREBESH FULL STOP
U+E8C2      AUREBESH QUESTION MARK
U+E8C3      AUREBESH EXCLAMATION MARK
U+E8C4      AUREBESH COLON
U+E8C5      AUREBESH SEMICOLON
U+E8C6      AUREBESH HYPHEN
U+E8C7      AUREBESH LEFT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK
U+E8C8      AUREBESH RIGHT DOUBLE QUOTATION MARK
U+E8C9      AUREBESH LEFT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK
U+E8CA      AUREBESH RIGHT SINGLE QUOTATION MARK
U+E8CB      AUREBESH LEFT PARENTHESIS
U+E8CC      AUREBESH RIGHT PARENTHESIS
U+E8CD      AUREBESH SOLIDUS
U+E8CE      AUREBESH CREDITS SIGN