O (kana)

For the kana generally romanized as "o", see wo (kana).

In Japanese writing, the kana お (hiragana) and オ (katakana) occupy the fifth place, between え and か, in the modern Gojūon (五十音) system of collating kana. In the Iroha, they occupy the 27th, between の and く. In the table at right (ordered by columns, from right to left), お lies in the first column (あ行, "column A") and the fifth row (お段, "row O"). Both represent [o].

Form	Rōmaji	Hiragana	Katakana
Normal a/i/u/e/o (あ行 a-gyō)	o	お	オ
	ou oo ō	おう, おぅ おお, おぉ おー	オウ, オゥ オオ, オォ オー

o
hiragana katakana
transliteration	o
hiragana origin	於
katakana origin	於
Man'yōgana	意 憶 於 應
spelling kana	大阪のオ (Ōsaka no "o")

Derivation

お and オ originate, via man'yōgana, from the kanji 於.

Variant forms

Scaled-down versions of the kana (ぉ, ォ) are used to express morae foreign to the Japanese language, such as フォ (fo).

Stroke order

Stroke order in writing お

Stroke order in writing オ

Stroke order in writing お

The hiragana お is made with three strokes:

1. A horizontal line from left to right.
2. A stroke consisting of a vertical line, a small diagonal line going upwards and to the left, and an open curve heading right and downwards.
3. A small curved stroke on the right.

Stroke order in writing オ

The katakana オ is made with three strokes:

1. At the top, a horizontal stroke from left to right.
2. A downward vertical stroke cutting through the first stroke, with a small hook at the end facing left.
3. At the intersection of the first two strokes, a diagonal line going downwards and to the left.

Other communicative representations

Japanese radiotelephony alphabet	Wabun code
大阪のオ Ōsaka no "O"	▄ ▄▄▄ ▄ ▄ ▄ ⓘ

Japanese Navy Signal Flag	Japanese semaphore	Japanese manual syllabary (fingerspelling)	Braille dots-24 Japanese Braille

• Full Braille representation

お / オ in Japanese Braille
お / オ o	おう / オー ō/ou	+う / +ー chōon*

* When lengthening "-o" morae in Japanese braille, a chōon is always used, as in standard katakana usage instead of adding an お / オ.

• Computer encodings

Character information

Preview	お		オ		ｵ		㋔
Unicode name	HIRAGANA LETTER O		KATAKANA LETTER O		HALFWIDTH KATAKANA LETTER O		CIRCLED KATAKANA O
Encodings	decimal	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex
Unicode	12362	U+304A	12458	U+30AA	65397	U+FF75	13012	U+32D4
UTF-8	227 129 138	E3 81 8A	227 130 170	E3 82 AA	239 189 181	EF BD B5	227 139 148	E3 8B 94
Numeric character reference	お	お	オ	オ	ｵ	ｵ	㋔	㋔
Shift JIS[1]	130 168	82 A8	131 73	83 49	181	B5
EUC-JP[2]	164 170	A4 AA	165 170	A5 AA	142 181	8E B5
GB 18030[3]	164 170	A4 AA	165 170	A5 AA	132 49 151 55	84 31 97 37	129 57 210 48	81 39 D2 30
EUC-KR[4] / UHC[5]	170 170	AA AA	171 170	AB AA
Big5 (non-ETEN kana)[6]	198 174	C6 AE	199 66	C7 42
Big5 (ETEN / HKSCS)[7]	198 240	C6 F0	199 166	C7 A6

Character information

Preview	ぉ		ォ		ｫ
Unicode name	HIRAGANA LETTER SMALL O		KATAKANA LETTER SMALL O		HALFWIDTH KATAKANA LETTER SMALL O
Encodings	decimal	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex
Unicode	12361	U+3049	12457	U+30A9	65387	U+FF6B
UTF-8	227 129 137	E3 81 89	227 130 169	E3 82 A9	239 189 171	EF BD AB
Numeric character reference	ぉ	ぉ	ォ	ォ	ｫ	ｫ
Shift JIS[1]	130 167	82 A7	131 72	83 48	171	AB
EUC-JP[2]	164 169	A4 A9	165 169	A5 A9	142 171	8E AB
GB 18030[3]	164 169	A4 A9	165 169	A5 A9	132 49 150 55	84 31 96 37
EUC-KR[4] / UHC[5]	170 169	AA A9	171 169	AB A9
Big5 (non-ETEN kana)[6]	198 173	C6 AD	199 65	C7 41
Big5 (ETEN / HKSCS)[7]	198 239	C6 EF	199 165	C7 A5

References

1. Unicode Consortium (2015-12-02) [1994-03-08]. "Shift-JIS to Unicode".
2. Unicode Consortium; IBM. "EUC-JP-2007". International Components for Unicode.
3. Standardization Administration of China (SAC) (2005-11-18). GB 18030-2005: Information Technology—Chinese coded character set.
4. Unicode Consortium; IBM. "IBM-970". International Components for Unicode.
5. Steele, Shawn (2000). "cp949 to Unicode table". Microsoft / Unicode Consortium.
6. Unicode Consortium (2015-12-02) [1994-02-11]. "BIG5 to Unicode table (complete)".
7. van Kesteren, Anne. "big5". Encoding Standard. WHATWG.