Cyrillic script

The Cyrillic script (/sɪˈrɪlɪk/ sih-RIL-ik), Slavonic script or the Slavic script is a writing system used for various languages across Eurasia. It is the designated national script in various Slavic, Turkic, Mongolic, Uralic, Caucasian and Iranic-speaking countries in Southeastern Europe, Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, Central Asia, North Asia, and East Asia, and used by many other minority languages.

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Cyrillic script
1780s Romanian text (Lord's Prayer), written with the Cyrillic script
Script type	Alphabet
Time period	Earliest variants exist c. 893[1] – c. 940
Direction	left-to-right
Official script	7 sovereign states  Belarus  Bulgaria  Kyrgyzstan  Russia  Serbia  Tajikistan  Ukraine Co-official script in: 7 sovereign states  Bosnia and Herzegovina[lower-alpha 1]  Kosovo[lower-alpha 2]  Kazakhstan[lower-alpha 3][citation needed]  Uzbekistan[lower-alpha 4]  Mongolia[lower-alpha 5]  Montenegro[lower-alpha 6]  North Macedonia[lower-alpha 7]
Languages	See Languages using Cyrillic
Related scripts
Parent systems	Egyptian hieroglyphs[2] Proto-Sinaitic Phoenician Greek script augmented by Glagolitic Early Cyrillic script Cyrillic script
Child systems	Old Permic script
Sister systems	Armenian Coptic Latin
ISO 15924
ISO 15924	Cyrl (220), ​Cyrillic Cyrs (Old Church Slavonic variant)
Unicode
Unicode alias	Cyrillic
Unicode range	U+0400–U+04FF Cyrillic U+0500–U+052F Cyrillic Supplement U+2DE0–U+2DFF Cyrillic Extended-A U+A640–U+A69F Cyrillic Extended-B U+1C80–U+1C8F Cyrillic Extended-C U+1E030–U+1E08F Cyrillic Extended-D
Names: Belarusian: кірыліца, Bulgarian: кирилица [ˈkirilit͡sɐ], Macedonian: кирилица [kiˈrilit͡sa], Russian: кириллица [kʲɪˈrʲilʲɪtsə], Serbian: ћирилица, Ukrainian: кирилиця
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between [ ], / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

As of 2019^[update], around 250 million people in Eurasia use Cyrillic as the official script for their national languages, with Russia accounting for about half of them.[4] With the accession of Bulgaria to the European Union on 1 January 2007, Cyrillic became the third official script of the European Union, following the Latin and Greek alphabets.[5]

The Early Cyrillic alphabet was developed during the 9th century AD at the Preslav Literary School in the First Bulgarian Empire during the reign of Tsar Simeon I the Great, probably by the disciples of the two Byzantine brothers Cyril and Methodius, who had previously created the Glagolitic script. Among them were Clement of Ohrid, Naum of Preslav, Angelar, Sava and other scholars.[6][7][8][9] The script is named in honor of Saint Cyril.