Please refer to this thread: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-gnu-emacs/2013-02/msg00138.html Sometimes the script name symbol of a character is more important than its charset. For example, you'd like to use `set-fontset-font' to set a proper font specifying its script as target, rather than specifying its charset, which usually is unicode. In addition, as unicode family is a common charset, the "preferred charset" displayed by `describe-char' seems not quite useful. In contrast, script makes more sense. For example, script 'han tells me this is a CJK character and 'greek tells me this is a greek letter, while charset often tells me nothing. Therefore, I suggest display the script name symbol as well when calling `describe-char'. So that we can press [C-u C-x =] to get it. I also wrote a simple patch for this. Besides, I hope there is a handy function called `list-character-scripts', just like `list-character-sets'. It's a really simple function: just return (char-table-extra-slot char-script-table 0). I believe this function will make script name symbols less confuse.