U0645

U+0645, often written as U0645, is the Unicode code point for ARABIC LETTER MEEM, a consonant representing the sound /m/ in the Arabic script. It is used in Arabic and in many languages that use the Arabic script, including Persian (Farsi), Urdu, Kurdish, and other languages that have adapted the script for their own phonologies.

The character resides in the Arabic block (U+0600 to U+06FF). Its official Unicode name is ARABIC LETTER MEEM. In Unicode its general category is Lo (Letter, other) and its bidirectional class is AL (Arabic Letter). The letter has no combining marks of its own; the shaping of its form—isolated, initial, medial, and final—is provided by the font and text layout engine based on context. There are Arabic Presentation Forms blocks (for compatibility) that contain pre-joined or contextual forms, but modern text typically uses the base code point with font shaping rather than those compatibility forms.

Meem represents the sound /m/. In the Abjad numeral system, meem has the numeric value 40. In transliteration, the letter is commonly represented by the Latin letter "m" and is often named in scripts as "meem." An example usage is the word محمد (Muhammad), which includes meem at the beginning and in other positions within the word.

See also: Arabic script, Unicode, ARABIC LETTER NOON, Arabic Presentation Forms.