# Unicode Support; Newbie Looking for Clarification **URL:** \ **Category:** Elasticsearch\ **Created:** [October 16, 2012, 5:30pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/unicode-support-newbie-looking-for-clarification/9384 "2012-10-16T17:30:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Adam\_Georgiou](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/adam_georgiou/32/1409_2.png) [@Adam\_Georgiou](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/Adam_Georgiou)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2012, 5:30pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/unicode-support-newbie-looking-for-clarification/9384/1 "2012-10-16T17:30:59Z")
Hey Elasticsearch, Doing some preliminary research on whether or not we want to use ElasticSearch to replace some really old searching/profiling (i.e. percolating) software we use -- Verity Search. This might seem like somewhat of a naive question, as I'm suspicious of everything coming out of the deep hole in the ground that is the unsupported and thoroughly deprecated piece of software that is Verity, but... \*does ElasticSearch(/Lucene) support unicode out of the box? \*I've read the section of the docs on the ICU plugin, and between that and what's floating around this list, it seems pretty obvious that it does support it; I'm curious if anyone can confirm this with a flat yes or no, and also if it's a pluggin feature (via the ICU plugin) or native to ElasticSearch itself. I'm guessing it's native, while the ICU plugin gives you some of the i18n/L10n features usually needed to fully leverage foreign languages, but again, just looking for some confirmation. Also wondering how responsive this list is... 😉 Thanks, Adam -- ---
**Author:** ![simonw\_2](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/user_avatar/discuss.elastic.co/simonw_2/32/1130_2.png) [@simonw\_2](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/simonw_2)\ **Post date:** [October 16, 2012, 9:07pm UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/unicode-support-newbie-looking-for-clarification/9384/2 "2012-10-16T21:07:36Z")
hey adam, On Tuesday, October 16, 2012 7:30:59 PM UTC+2, Adam Georgiou wrote: > Hey Elasticsearch, > > Doing some preliminary research on whether or not we want to use > Elasticsearch to replace some really old searching/profiling (i.e. > percolating) software we use -- Verity Search. This might seem like > somewhat of a naive question, as I'm suspicious of everything coming out of > the deep hole in the ground that is the unsupported and thoroughly > deprecated piece of software that is Verity, but... \*does > Elasticsearch(/Lucene) support unicode out of the box? \*I've read the > section of the docs on the ICU plugin, and between that and what's floating > around this list, it seems pretty obvious that it does support it; I'm > curious if anyone can confirm this with a flat yes or no, and also if it's > a pluggin feature (via the ICU plugin) or native to Elasticsearch itself. > I'm guessing it's native, while the ICU plugin gives you some of the > i18n/L10n features usually needed to fully leverage foreign languages, but > again, just looking for some confirmation. Elasticsearch & Lucene has excellent unicode support. All lucene analyzers, tokenziers and tokenfilters have fully Unicode 4.0 support including supplementary characters, everything in the BMP etc. etc. With ICU you have Unicode 6 (in lucene we recently upgraded to 6.1 even) that should give you all the tools you need. I personally use lucene & es for search engines that search across 150+ different languages, scripts etc. The file formats use UTF-8 anyway so you really should not be worried about this! 🙂 > Also wondering how responsive this list is... 😉 pretty responsive I guess 🙂 simon > Thanks, > Adam -- ---
**Author:** ![system](https://us1.discourse-cdn.com/elastic/original/3X/1/a/1ac57faf039f6b580b3f104ef42a2a89e41014de.png) [@system](https://discuss.elastic.co/u/system)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2017, 3:08am UTC](https://discuss.elastic.co/t/unicode-support-newbie-looking-for-clarification/9384/3 "2017-07-06T03:08:24Z")