Latin Capital I with Circumflex Î

The Latin Capital I with Circumflex character (Î) is a standard HTML entity defined in the HTML specification. In HTML source code, it can be written using the named entity reference Î, the decimal numeric character reference Î, or the hexadecimal numeric reference Î. The character is assigned Unicode code point U+00CE in the Universal Character Set.

The capital I with circumflex (Î) is used in French, Romanian, and Turkish. In French, it appears in words like 'île' (island). In Romanian, Î is one of the most distinctive characters of the language, representing a central close vowel sound unique to Romanian.

Latin extended character entities provide the accented and modified letters required by dozens of European languages. From French accents aigus and graves to German umlauts, Scandinavian rings, and Icelandic thorns, these entities ensure correct rendering of non-ASCII characters within HTML documents. While modern UTF-8 encoded pages can include these characters directly in source code, HTML entities remain valuable for source code clarity and legacy compatibility.

When deciding how to encode the Latin Capital I with Circumflex character in your HTML documents, the named entity Î is generally the most readable choice for developers reviewing or maintaining source code. The decimal form Î and hexadecimal form Î are equally valid alternatives that work in contexts where named entities may not be supported, or when generating HTML output programmatically from server-side code. All three representations produce identical visual output in every modern web browser.

Use this entity in French (Î as in 'île'), Romanian (where Î is essential and very common), and Turkish text. In Romanian, Î and  represent the same sound but appear in different positions within words — Î at the beginning and end,  in the middle.