Category:Cryptography

Quoted from Substitution Ciphers

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Homophonic Ciphers

An interesting variant is the nomenclator. Named after the public official who announced the titles of visiting dignitaries, this cipher combined a small codebook with large homophonic substitution tables. Originally the code was restricted to the names of important people, hence the name of the cipher; in later years it covered many common words and place names as well. The symbols for whole words (codewords in modern parlance) and letters (cipher in modern parlance) were not distinguished in the ciphertext. The Rossignols' Great Cypher used by Louis XIV of France was one; after it went out of use, messages in French archives were unbreakable for several hundred years.