Maltese Cross ✠
Symbol Meaning
The symbol depicts a Maltese cross of extraordinary shape. It has four equal bars, which become more narrow as they approach the centre. Unlike the classic Maltese cross, this Unicode sign has non-bifurcating T-shaped crossbars. It differs from the St. George's cross due to the absence of a round middle.
The symbol U+2720 demonstrates an accurate design. It doesn't possess outlined frames, shadows, or other additional elements. Despite the ancient origins of the symbol, the Maltese cross from Unicode is rarely used to denote the Order of the Hospitallers and the eight knightly virtues. The context goes beyond history, and you may often come across such a symbol in texts, as it can be a perfect embellishment for posts on social media.
The symbol “Maltese Cross” is included in the “Crosses” subblock of the “Dingbats” block and was approved as part of Unicode version 1.1 in 1993.
| Type of paired mirror bracket (bidi) | None |
| Composition Exclusion | No |
| Case change | 2720 |
| Simple case change | 2720 |
| Grapheme_Base | + |
| scripts | Common |
| Pattern_Syntax | + |
| Encoding | hex | dec (bytes) | dec | binary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| UTF-8 | E2 9C A0 | 226 156 160 | 14851232 | 11100010 10011100 10100000 |
| UTF-16BE | 27 20 | 39 32 | 10016 | 00100111 00100000 |
| UTF-16LE | 20 27 | 32 39 | 8231 | 00100000 00100111 |
| UTF-32BE | 00 00 27 20 | 0 0 39 32 | 10016 | 00000000 00000000 00100111 00100000 |
| UTF-32LE | 20 27 00 00 | 32 39 0 0 | 539426816 | 00100000 00100111 00000000 00000000 |
