The Maldivian Rufiyaa symbol, designed for use on Maldivian Rufiyaa banknotes and price labels, has been decided to be included in the 'Unicode Standard', the world's digital writing system. This is the result of years of work undertaken for this purpose by talented young individuals in the fields of Maldivian technology and font design.
The official proposal to make the Maldivian Rufiyaa symbol a digitally usable character on an international scale was submitted to the Unicode Consortium by Nail Abdul Rahman (Kuda Nai) and Abdullah Shafiu (Abo).
Submitted in March of last year with the endorsement of the MMA, this proposal requested the creation of a special Unicode character under the name "Rufiyaa Sign". The code proposed to be assigned to this character is U+20C2.
The Unicode Technical Committee accepted this proposal and decided to include this symbol in Unicode Version 18.0. With this, the Rufiyaa symbol has become a digital character conforming to international standards.
This work began because, although a Rufiyaa symbol was officially designated in the Maldives, difficulties arose due to the lack of a dedicated Unicode character for that emblem. Although the symbol was introduced in 2022, its true utility was not being realized. Due to the absence of the Rufiyaa symbol in digital systems, it was previously used through fonts made to display the symbol or various typographic tricks.
Therefore, for Nail and Shafiu, this work was much more important than simply designing a new font.
It was a major effort carried out to incorporate the Maldivian Rufiyaa symbol within the digital system used across computers, phones, websites, financial systems, and various devices used around the world.
"Without the symbol being added to Unicode, it cannot be used in any system. Therefore, this is something that definitely needs to be done. Someone had to do it... That is why we took the initiative," Nail said.
This work was much broader than simply sending a submission to Unicode.
This proposal had to be prepared in accordance with the technical framework followed when adding a character to the standard of international characters. This included proving the proposed name for the character, code point, categorization, character properties, writing method, how it is used in fonts, and the fact that the symbol is already in use.
Additionally, a computer font of the Rufiyaa symbol for use in the Unicode stage was designed by Abo of "Akuru Type". According to Shafiu, this is a work he is very proud of.
In addition to Nail and Shafiu, the names of Hassan Irufan from the Maldives ICT Alliance, Unicode expert Abdullah Qadir, and Dr. Sarmad Hussain deserve to be mentioned in this work.
From the Maldives to Billions of Digital Devices
The importance of this achievement extends far beyond a character added to a computer keyboard.
Unicode is an international standard that facilitates the uniform use of writings and symbols across different computer systems and digital platforms. With the assignment of "U+20C2" to the Rufiyaa symbol, software and font developers are given the opportunity to include this symbol under a globally accepted standard instead of relying on a specific custom font.
"...now, whenever any country's system reads it, it will know that it is the Rufiyaa. Therefore, it is now official. When writing on a computer, it can now be written as intended," Nai said.
The Rufiyaa symbol is a symbol introduced by the MMA in 2022 following a competition opened to the entire Maldives. Designed by Hassan Shujau, this symbol is based on the letter "ރ" (ra). The intersecting line included in it symbolizes the equality sign used in mathematics.
