Name, Phonology and Written Representation
The Sanskrit name for the syllable is praṇava, from a root nu "to shout, sound", verbal pra-nu- being attested as "to make a humming or droning sound" in the Brahmanas, and taking the specific meaning of "to utter the syllable om" in the Chāndogya Upanishad and the Shrauta Sutras. More rarely used terms are akṣara (lit. symbol, character) or ekākṣara (lit. one symbol, character), and in later times omkāra becomes prevalent.
Phonemically, the syllable is /aum/, which is regularly monophthongized to in Sanskrit phonology. It is sometimes also written with pluti, as o3m (ओ३म्), notably by Arya Samaj. When occurring within a Sanskrit utterance, the syllable is subject to the normal rules of sandhi in Sanskrit grammar, however with the additional peculiarity that after preceding a or ā, the au of aum does not form vriddhi (au) but guna (o) per Pāṇini 6.1.95 (i.e. 'om').
The om symbol is a ligature of Devanagari ओ+ँ (oṃ, encoded in Unicode at U+0950 ॐ, the Tibetan script variant ༀ at U+0F00, and the Chinese version 唵 at U+5535 or 吽 at U+543D).
| Om in various scripts |
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The symbol om in the Grantha alphabet
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The symbol om in the Gujarati, Marathi, Devanagari (Nepali, Hindi) scripts
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The symbol "om" in the Tamil script
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The symbol "om" in Telugu and Kannada script
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The symbol "om" in Oriya, Assamese and Bengali alphabet.
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The symbol "om" in Tibetan alphabet
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