The Circumflex Accent: Caret Symbol ^ and Hat Letters â ê ô

What does circumflex mean, and why does it look like a hat?

A circumflex is the mark shaped like a small hat that sits over â, ê and ô. Oxford (opens in a new tab) defines it as the mark placed over a vowel in some languages to show how it should be pronounced, as over the o in rôle. On a keyboard the same angle stands alone as ^, the caret symbol.

The circumflex meaning is in its name. Oxford dates the word to the late 16th century and traces it to Latin circumflexus, from circum, around, and flectere, to bend. The Latin translated a Greek word, perispōmenos, drawn around.

Polytonic Greek writes that accent, and Unicode files it apart. Chapter 7 of the Unicode Standard (opens in a new tab) notes that the Greek perispomeni may be drawn as a circumflex, an inverted breve or a tilde. Because its shape varies, it has its own code point, U+0342 COMBINING GREEK PERISPOMENI, apart from the Latin U+0302.

Most other names describe the shape. Unicode's names list (opens in a new tab) gives hat as a second name for U+0302 COMBINING CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT, and Wiktionary's entry for hat (opens in a new tab) records the word for the circumflex in typography and mathematics: the hat symbol. Welsh says to bach (opens in a new tab), which means little roof.

What job does the circumflex do in French, Portuguese, Welsh and Vietnamese?

Each language gives the hat its own job: a lost letter, a closed or long vowel, or a new letter. The usage map above lists which CLDR alphabets hold which letters; the table below says what the mark tells a reader in each.

Language	Letters	The job of the hat	Cited from
French	â ê î ô û	often stands for a lost s: forêt, forestier; hôpital, hospitalier	OQLF
Portuguese	â ê ô	marks a stressed close vowel: âmbar, agência, côncavo	Priberam
Romanian	â î	two spellings of one vowel, /ɨ/: â inside a word, î at its start	DOOM 3, Wiktionary
Esperanto	ĉ ĝ ĥ ĵ ŝ	makes new consonants: ĉ is the ch of church	Fundamento
Welsh	â ê î ô û ŵ ŷ	a long vowel, as in ŵ; â, with, against a, and	Wiktionary
Vietnamese	â ê ô	makes letters of their own, which then carry a tone mark: ấ	Unicode ch. 7, Wiktionary
Slovak	ô	spells the diphthong uo, as in kôň	Wiktionary
Turkish	â î û	a long vowel that tells words apart, as in âdet, or a soft k or g before a and u, as in dükkân	TDK

French hides an older spelling under the hat. The OQLF (opens in a new tab) lists word families where one member keeps the s and the other wears the mark instead. Wiktionary traces forêt (opens in a new tab) to Old French forest and hôpital (opens in a new tab) to Old French hospital.

Spelling reform touched only two of the five vowels. Under the 1990 rectifications, the OQLF says the hat may be dropped on i and u (opens in a new tab), except in dû, mûr, sûr, jeûne and verb endings. The French alphabet, i with accent and u with accent pages give the full rules.

Portuguese uses the mark for sound. Priberam (opens in a new tab) defines the acento circunflexo as the sign over a stressed a, e or o when the vowel is closed. The a with accent and o with accent pages set â and ô beside the acute, which marks the open vowel.

Romanian keeps one sound under two letters. DOOM 3 (opens in a new tab), the Romanian Academy's spelling dictionary, writes â only inside words, as in câmp and român. It writes î at the start of a word and at the end of verbs such as a coborî. DOOM adds that the choice between the two letters has no phonetic value. The Romanian alphabet covers the rest of the rule.

Esperanto built its alphabet around the mark. The Fundamento de Esperanto (opens in a new tab) gives ĉ as the ch of church, ĝ as the j of join, ĥ as the ch of loch, ĵ as the z of azure and ŝ as the sh of show.

The Fundamento even prints the mark as a keyboard caret, (^), in its note on printing without accents. The g with accent, h with accent and j with accent pages cover each letter and the h fallback.

In Welsh the roof marks length, with one exception. Wiktionary's entry for ŵ (opens in a new tab) describes it as the w marked for its long stressed sound. Its entry for â (opens in a new tab) notes that in â, with, the mark keeps the word apart from a, and, rather than showing length. The w with accent and y with accent pages cover ŵ and ŷ.

Vietnamese stacks a tone on top of the hat. Unicode's chapter 7 shows NFD breaking Ẩ into A, U+0302 and a hook above, and in our run ấ broke into a, U+0302 and U+0301. The Vietnamese alphabet explains why typing the tone first leaves a loose mark.

The Slovak and Turkish rows have pages of their own. The Slovak alphabet covers ô, the vokáň. Turkish is missing from the usage map above, because CLDR does not list â, î or û among Turkish letters. The Turkish Language Association's rules for the düzeltme işareti (opens in a new tab) still use all three, and the Turkish alphabet page explains them.

What does the caret symbol ^ mean in math, code and chat?

The caret symbol ^ is U+005E, which Unicode still names CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT and Wiktionary (opens in a new tab) calls caret in English. Alone, it carries no accent job; context decides what it means:

Context	Meaning of ^	Reference
2^3 in a spreadsheet or calculator	to the power of: 2^3 is 8	Excel operators, NamesList
2 ^ 3 in JavaScript	bitwise XOR, not a power: 2 ^ 3 is 1	MDN, run in Node.js 26
at the start of a regular expression	the start of the input: ^ab matches abc, not cab	MDN
first inside square brackets in a regex	any character except those listed	Wiktionary
^F or ^C in a manual or a terminal	the Control key, or a control character in caret notation	Wiktionary
under a message in a chat	points to the message above	Wiktionary
under a line of a manuscript	insert something here; the proofreader's mark is ⁁	Oxford, Unicode ch. 6

The spreadsheet row is from Microsoft's table of Excel operators (opens in a new tab), which lists ^ (caret) as exponentiation. The names list agrees for U+005E: it is used for exponents in ASCII-based notation.

MDN (opens in a new tab) documents ^ as bitwise XOR in JavaScript, and in a pattern it asserts the start of the input (opens in a new tab). Node.js v26.0.0 printed 1 for 2^3 on 2026-10-14, and 8 for 2**3.

Manuals that write ^C mean the Control key. Apple's list of modifier symbols (opens in a new tab) uses a different glyph for that key in menus, ⌃, which is U+2303 UP ARROWHEAD rather than the caret.

The name caret comes from proofreading. Oxford defines a caret (opens in a new tab) as the mark ⁁ placed below a line to show where words or letters should be added, from a Latin word meaning is lacking.

Where is the ^ key on Windows, Mac and French AZERTY keyboards?

On US and UK keyboards the caret shares the 6 key in the number row: hold Shift and press 6. Microsoft's US layout (opens in a new tab) and UK layout (opens in a new tab) both put U+005E CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT on the key they call VK_6, in the Shift layer. Apple's U.S. and ABC layouts agree: run through UCKeyTranslate on macOS 26.6.2 on 2026-10-14, Shift with 6 produced U+005E, while Shift with 1 produced ! as a control.

French keyboards hide the caret behind a dead key. Microsoft's French layout (opens in a new tab) puts the circumflex on the key right of P, unshifted. Pressed alone, it types nothing. A vowel gives â, ê, î, ô or û, and Space gives the caret ^ itself. Holding AltGr and pressing 9 types the caret directly.

Layout	Keys for ^	Key pressed alone	Documented by
US, Windows	Shift+6	6	Microsoft, kbdus
United Kingdom, Windows	Shift+6	6	Microsoft, kbduk
French AZERTY, Windows	the key right of P, then Space; or AltGr with the 9 key	the dead key itself	Microsoft, kbdfr
Mac, U.S. or ABC	Shift+6	6	our UCKeyTranslate run
Mac, US International PC	Shift+6, then Space	6; Shift+6 then e gives ê	our UCKeyTranslate run
Chromebook, US International	Shift+6, then the letter	6	Google help 1059492

Google's Chromebook help (opens in a new tab) documents the same dead key on the US International keyboard: Circumflex (^), Shift + 6 then the letter.

Why does Option+I on a Mac give ˆ and not the caret?

Because Option+I is the accent key, built for letters, not for the symbol. Apple's Pages guide (opens in a new tab) gives the method: press Option+I, then type a, to enter â. We tried other second keys through UCKeyTranslate on the U.S. and ABC layouts. Space after it produced U+02C6 MODIFIER LETTER CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT, a different character from the caret.

The dead key also stops at five vowels. Before c, w or y it gave up and typed two characters, the raised ˆ and the plain letter. AccentPad's measured table of Apple's Option layer (2026-10-10) adds a third route: Shift, Option and I together also type U+02C6.

Keys on a Mac (U.S. or ABC)	Result	Code points
Shift+6	^, the caret	U+005E
Option+I, then Space	ˆ, a modifier letter	U+02C6
Shift, Option and I together	ˆ, a modifier letter	U+02C6
Option+I, then E	ê	U+00EA
Option+I, then C	ˆc, two characters	U+02C6 U+0063

Software does not treat the two alike. A spreadsheet will not read ˆ as a power, and a regular expression treats it as an ordinary character. On the web, the WHATWG list (opens in a new tab) maps the HTML entity ˆ to U+02C6, not to the caret, which is ^. For a formula, a pattern or a keyboard shortcut, type Shift+6. Keep Option+I for â, ê, î, ô and û.

Caret, combining mark or modifier letter: which ^ is in your text?

Three characters can look like a circumflex, and only one of them builds â. The caret is U+005E, a spacing character with a width of its own. The circumflex in â is U+0302 COMBINING CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT, which has no width and sits on the letter before it. U+02C6 is a modifier letter that phonetics uses for tone and stress.

Unicode's chapter 7 explains why the keyboard character is not the accent. In ISO/IEC 8859-1, ^ was ambiguous: a mark to combine with a letter, or a character of its own. Unicode uses U+005E only as a spacing character and gives accented letters unambiguous combining marks.

Node.js 26.0.0 (ICU 78.3, Unicode 17.0) gave these results on 2026-10-14. NFC is the composed form most software stores; NFKC also replaces compatibility characters such as the fullwidth ＾.

Input	NFC gives	NFKC gives
a, then U+0302	â, one character, U+00E2	â
c, then U+0302	ĉ, U+0109	ĉ
x, then U+0302	still x and the mark: no x with circumflex exists	unchanged
a, then ^	still a and ^	still a and ^
a, then ˆ U+02C6	still a and ˆ	still a and ˆ
＾ U+FF3E	unchanged	^ U+005E

The modifier row is where the circumflex differs from the tilde. NFKC turns a raised ˜ into a space and the combining tilde, but U+02C6 has no compatibility mapping. A pasted ˆ after a vowel stays a separate character in every normalization form.

Beyond those three, eight more characters share the angle, and the names list and chapter 6 give each its own role:

Glyph	Unicode name and number	Job
^	U+005E CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT	the keyboard caret: powers, XOR, regex, the Control key in manuals
◌̂	U+0302 COMBINING CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT	the mark on a letter; also named hat
ˆ	U+02C6 MODIFIER LETTER CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT	phonetics: a rising-falling or falling tone, secondary stress
‸	U+2038 CARET	the typographic caret
⁁	U+2041 CARET INSERTION POINT	the proofreader's mark: insert here
⌃	U+2303 UP ARROWHEAD	the symbol Apple prints for the Control key in menus
∧	U+2227 LOGICAL AND	logic: and, also called wedge
ʌ	U+028C LATIN SMALL LETTER TURNED V	an IPA vowel, also called caret or wedge
˄	U+02C4 MODIFIER LETTER UP ARROWHEAD	phonetics: raised articulation
＾	U+FF3E FULLWIDTH CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT	the wide form; NFKC turns it into ^
◌̭	U+032D COMBINING CIRCUMFLEX ACCENT BELOW	under a letter: fronted articulation in Americanist notation