Cyrillic Small Letter U with Macron

Cyrillic Small Letter U with Macron at U+04EF is a lowercase Cyrillic letter used to write a distinct u-like vowel in several Cyrillic-based alphabets. It belongs to the Cyrillic block and is treated as a normal alphabetic letter, not as a Latin u with added decoration. Its best-known modern use is in Tajik, where it represents the rounded vowel commonly romanized as ū. It appears in ordinary words such as кӯҳ, “mountain,” and рӯз, “day,” and contrasts with plain у in spelling and pronunciation. The letter is also used in some minority-language Cyrillic orthographies of Russia and Central Asia, including languages where a macron marks a lengthened, centralized, or otherwise distinct u sound. In dictionaries, schoolbooks, maps, and personal names from those languages, it functions as part of the standard spelling rather than as a pronunciation aid. Because it closely resembles Cyrillic small у with a macron above it, searching or sorting may distinguish it from plain у and from visually similar Latin ū. That matters in transliteration, bibliographic records, and name databases where Tajik or other Cyrillic text must be matched exactly.