Circumflex Letters (â ê î ô û): Copy, Paste and Type

Circumflex letters are vowels and a few consonants with a small hat on top: â ê î ô û ŵ ŷ ĉ ĝ ĥ ĵ ŝ. Click any letter above to copy it, or use the shortcuts below: on Windows hold Alt and type 0226 for â, and on a Mac press Option + I, then the letter.

The circumflex is used in French, Portuguese, Romanian, Welsh, Esperanto, Vietnamese and several other languages. It does a different job in each one, which is why the same mark can look identical but sound different.

What the circumflex does in each language

The name comes from Latin "circumflexus", meaning "bent around". Here is what the mark tells a reader in the languages that use it most.

French: the lost s

In French, a circumflex often sits where an s used to be. Compare forêt with English "forest", île with "isle" and hôpital with "hospital". It can also tell apart words that are otherwise spelled the same, such as du (of the) and dû (owed), or sur (on) and sûr (sure). For the full set of French marks, see French accent marks explained.

Portuguese: closed vowels

Portuguese uses â, ê and ô for a stressed vowel with a closed sound. The pair avô (grandfather) and avó (grandmother) shows the difference: the circumflex gives a closed o, the acute gives an open one. See the Portuguese accent letters page for the other marks.

Romanian: â and î

Romanian â and î represent the same sound. The general rule is î at the start and end of a word and â in the middle, as in înainte and român.

Welsh: the to bach

Welsh writers call the circumflex "to bach", meaning "little roof". It lengthens a vowel and is the main reason ŵ and ŷ exist. Common examples are tŷ (house) and dŵr (water).

Esperanto: consonants with hats

Esperanto puts the circumflex on consonants: ĉ, ĝ, ĥ, ĵ and ŝ. Each one counts as its own letter of the alphabet.

Vietnamese: letters that stack

In Vietnamese, â, ê and ô are separate letters. They can carry a tone mark on top as well, giving stacked forms like ấ, ầ and ổ.

How to type circumflex letters

The quickest method is to click a letter above. If you need to type them often, use the shortcut for your device.

Alt codes need the number pad with Num Lock on. The numbers along the top row do not work. If your laptop has no number pad, read how to type accents on a laptop without a numpad.

Letters with no shortcut

The Welsh and Esperanto letters have no Alt code and no built-in Mac Option shortcut on the US layout. Use one of these methods instead:

• Copy them from the grid at the top of this page.
• On Windows, press Win + . (period), open the Symbols tab and find the Latin letters.
• On a Mac, press Control + Command + Space to open the Character Viewer and search for the letter name.
• In Microsoft Word, type the hex code below and press Alt + X.

US International keyboard

On the Windows US International layout, the ^ key is a dead key. Type ^ (Shift + 6), then a vowel: ^ then o gives ô. Press Space after ^ to type a plain caret.

Phones and tablets

On iPhone and Android, press and hold a vowel and slide to the version with the hat. See how to type accents on iPhone and Android for keyboard settings.

Circumflex vs caret

The ^ symbol on your keyboard is called a caret. It is a standalone character, U+005E, and it does not attach to a letter. Pasting ^ next to an a will not produce â.

Unicode stores the common circumflex letters as single precomposed characters, such as â (U+00E2). It also has a combining circumflex, U+0302, that can attach to any base letter. Precomposed letters are safer for search, sorting and fonts, so copy those when they exist.

For the other marks and their names, see the accent mark names reference or the full accent letters list.