Emoticons (Unicode block)

Last updated
Emoticons
RangeU+1F600..U+1F64F
(80 code points)
Plane SMP
Scripts Common
Symbol sets Emoji
Emoticons
Assigned80 code points
Unused0 reserved code points
Unicode version history
6.0 (2010)63 (+63)
6.1 (2012)76 (+13)
7.0 (2014)78 (+2)
8.0 (2015)80 (+2)
Unicode documentation
Code chart ∣ Web page
Note: [1] [2]

Emoticons is a Unicode block containing emoticons or emoji. [3] [4] [5] Most of them are intended as representations of faces, although some of them include hand gestures or non-human characters (a horned "imp", monkeys, cartoon cats).

Contents

The block was first proposed in 2008, and first implemented in Unicode version 6.0 (2010). The reason for its adoption was largely for compatibility with a de facto standard that had been established by the early 2000s by Japanese telephone carriers, encoded in unused ranges with lead bytes 0xF5 to 0xF9 of the Shift JIS standard. [6] KDDI has gone much further than this, and has introduced hundreds more in the space with lead bytes 0xF3 and 0xF4. [7]

Descriptions

1F600😀grinning face
1F601😁grinning face with smiling eyes
1F602😂 face with tears of joy
1F603😃 smiling face with open mouth (c.f. )
1F604😄smiling face with open mouth and smiling eyes
1F605😅smiling face with open mouth and cold sweat
1F606😆smiling face with open mouth and tightly-closed eyes
1F607😇smiling face with halo
1F608😈smiling face with horns (c.f. 👿 "imp")
1F609😉winking face
1F60A😊smiling face with smiling eyes
1F60B😋face savouring delicious food
1F60C😌relieved face
1F60D😍smiling face with heart-shaped eyes
1F60E😎smiling face with sunglasses
1F60F😏smirking face
1F610😐neutral face (also used for "west wind" 西 in some Mahjong annotation)
1F611😑expressionless face
1F612😒unamused face
1F613😓face with cold sweat
1F614😔pensive face
1F615😕confused face
1F616😖confounded face
1F617😗kissing face
1F618😘face throwing a kiss
1F619😙kissing face with smiling eyes
1F61A😚kissing face with closed eyes
1F61B😛face with stuck-out tongue
1F61C😜face with stuck-out tongue and winking eye
1F61D😝face with stuck-out tongue and tightly-closed eyes
1F61E😞disappointed face
1F61F😟worried face
1F620😠angry face
1F621😡pouting face
1F622😢crying face
1F623😣persevering face
1F624😤Unicode: face with look of triumph, Apple: huffing with anger face
1F625😥disappointed but relieved face
1F626😦frowning face with open mouth
1F627😧anguished face
1F628😨fearful face
1F629😩weary face
1F62A😪sleepy face
1F62B😫tired face
1F62C😬grimacing face
1F62D😭loudly crying face
1F62E😮face with open mouth
1F62F😯hushed face
1F630😰face with open mouth and cold sweat
1F631😱face screaming in fear
1F632😲astonished face
1F633😳 flushed face
1F634😴sleeping face
1F635😵dizzy face
1F636😶face without mouth (c.f. "white circle with two dots")
1F637😷face with medical mask
1F638😸grinning cat face with smiling eyes
1F639😹cat face with tears of joy
1F63A😺smiling cat face with open mouth
1F63B😻smiling cat face with heart-shape eyes
1F63C😼cat face with wry smile
1F63D😽kissing cat face with closed eyes
1F63E😾pouting cat face
1F63F😿crying cat face
1F640🙀weary cat face
1F641🙁slightly frowning face
1F642🙂slightly smiling face
1F643🙃upside-down face
1F644🙄face with rolling eyes
1F645🙅face with "no good" gesture, with lower arms crossed, derived from the Japanese gesture for "no". Intended as gender-neutral but represented as a woman on most platforms.
1F646🙆face with "ok" gesture, described as a person with arms raised above the head forming a "circle", interpreted as "OK sign" (derived from the Japanese gesture for "OK"). Intended as gender-neutral but represented as a woman on most platforms.
1F647🙇person bowing ( dogeza ), depicted as a man on most platforms.
1F648🙈 see-no-evil monkey
1F649🙉 hear-no-evil monkey
1F64A🙊 speak-no-evil monkey
1F64B🙋happy person raising one hand, a person raising one hand as if to answer a question, intended as gender-neutral but represented as a woman on most platforms.
1F64C🙌person raising both hands in celebration, on many platforms depicted as just the raised hands (Apple name: "Hands Raised in Celebration").
1F64D🙍person frowning
1F64E🙎person with pouting face
1F64F🙏person with folded hands (to indicate variously sorrow, regret, pleading, praying, bowing, thanking). In most platforms depicted as just the hand, pressed together but not folded (Apple name: "Hands Pressed Together").

Chart

Emoticons [1]
Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF)
 0123456789ABCDEF
U+1F60x 😀 😁 😂 😃 😄 😅 😆 😇 😈 😉 😊 😋 😌 😍 😎 😏
U+1F61x 😐 😑 😒 😓 😔 😕 😖 😗 😘 😙 😚 😛 😜 😝 😞 😟
U+1F62x 😠 😡 😢 😣 😤 😥 😦 😧 😨 😩 😪 😫 😬 😭 😮 😯
U+1F63x 😰 😱 😲 😳 😴 😵 😶 😷 😸 😹 😺 😻 😼 😽 😾 😿
U+1F64x 🙀 🙁 🙂 🙃 🙄 🙅 🙆 🙇 🙈 🙉 🙊 🙋 🙌 🙍 🙎 🙏
Notes
1. ^ As of Unicode version 15.1

Variant forms

Each emoticon has two variants:

If there is no variation selector appended, the default is the emoji-style. Example:

Unicode code pointsResult
U+1F610 (NEUTRAL FACE)😐
U+1F610 (NEUTRAL FACE), U+FE0E (VARIATION SELECTOR-15)😐
U+1F610 (NEUTRAL FACE), U+FE0F (VARIATION SELECTOR-16)😐

Emoji modifiers

The Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs block has 54 emoji that represent people or body parts. A set of "Emoji modifiers" are defined for emojis that represent people or body parts. These are modifier characters intended to define the skin colour to be used for the emoji. The draft document suggesting the introduction of this system for the representation of "human diversity" was submitted in 2015 by Mark Davis of Google and Peter Edberg of Apple Inc. [8] Five symbol modifier characters were added with Unicode 8.0 to provide a range of skin tones for human emoji. These modifiers are called EMOJI MODIFIER FITZPATRICK TYPE-1-2, -3, -4, -5, and -6 (U+1F3FB–U+1F3FF): 🏻 🏼 🏽 🏾 🏿. They are based on the Fitzpatrick scale for classifying human skin color.

Human emoji
U+1F6451F6461F6471F64B1F64C1F64D1F64E1F64F
emoji🙅🙆🙇🙋🙌🙍🙎🙏
FITZ-1-2🙅🏻🙆🏻🙇🏻🙋🏻🙌🏻🙍🏻🙎🏻🙏🏻
FITZ-3🙅🏼🙆🏼🙇🏼🙋🏼🙌🏼🙍🏼🙎🏼🙏🏼
FITZ-4🙅🏽🙆🏽🙇🏽🙋🏽🙌🏽🙍🏽🙎🏽🙏🏽
FITZ-5🙅🏾🙆🏾🙇🏾🙋🏾🙌🏾🙍🏾🙎🏾🙏🏾
FITZ-6🙅🏿🙆🏿🙇🏿🙋🏿🙌🏿🙍🏿🙎🏿🙏🏿

Additional human emoji can be found in other Unicode blocks: Dingbats, Miscellaneous Symbols, Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs, Supplemental Symbols and Pictographs, Symbols and Pictographs Extended-A and Transport and Map Symbols.

History

The following Unicode-related documents record the purpose and process of defining specific characters in the Emoticons block:

Version Final code points [lower-alpha 1] Count L2  ID WG2  IDDocument
6.0U+1F601..1F610, 1F612..1F614, 1F616, 1F618, 1F61A, 1F61C..1F61E, 1F620..1F625, 1F628..1F62B, 1F62D, 1F630..1F633, 1F635..1F640, 1F645..1F64F [lower-alpha 2] 63 L2/09-007 Lommel, Arle (2008-12-26), Comparison of Emoticons from Major Vendors
L2/09-025R2 N3582 [lower-alpha 3] Scherer, Markus; Davis, Mark; Momoi, Kat; Tong, Darick; Kida, Yasuo; Edberg, Peter (2009-03-05), Proposal for Encoding Emoji Symbols
L2/09-026R N3583 Scherer, Markus; Davis, Mark; Momoi, Kat; Tong, Darick; Kida, Yasuo; Edberg, Peter (2009-02-06), Emoji Symbols Proposed for New Encoding
L2/09-027R2 N3681 Scherer, Markus (2009-09-17), Emoji Symbols: Background Data
L2/09-114 N3607 Towards an encoding of symbol characters used as emoji, 2009-04-06
L2/09-304 Anderson, Deborah (2009-08-15), US Position on PDAM 8
L2/09-370 N3711 Ogata, Katsuhiro; et al. (2009-10-22), A Proposal to Revise a Part of Emoticons in PDAM 8
L2/09-371 N3713 Pentzlin, Karl (2009-10-22), Comment on "A proposal to Revise a Part of Emoticons in PDAM 8" (Katsuhiro Ogata et al., N3711)
L2/09-412 N3722 Suignard, Michel (2009-10-26), Disposition of comments on SC2 N 4078 (PDAM text for Amendment 8 to ISO/IEC 10646:2003)
N3703 (pdf, doc)Umamaheswaran, V. S. (2010-04-13), "M55.9j", Unconfirmed minutes of WG 2 meeting no. 55, Tokyo 2009-10-26/30
L2/09-335R Moore, Lisa (2009-11-10), "Consensus 121-C8", UTC #121 / L2 #218 Minutes
L2/10-036 N3769 Pentzlin, Karl (2010-01-26), Proposal to encode an emoticon Neutral Face
L2/10-061R Scherer, Markus; et al. (2010-02-04), "2, 4", Emoji: Review of FPDAM8
L2/10-066 N3790-ANSI Anderson, Deborah (2010-02-05), ANSI (U.S.) NB Comments on FPDAM 8
L2/10-015R Moore, Lisa (2010-02-09), "D.1.3", UTC #122 / L2 #219 Minutes
N3778 Ogata, Katsuhiro; Kamichi, Koichi; Moro, Shigeki; Kawabata, Taichi; Naoi, Yasushi (2010-03-03), Updated Proposal to Change Some Glyphs and Names of Emoticons
L2/10-089 N3777 KDDI Input on Emoji, 2010-03-08
L2/10-102 N3790 Summary of Voting on SC 2 N 4123, ISO/IEC 10646: 2003/FPDAM 8, 2010-03-27
L2/10-115 N3806 Ogata, Katsuhiro; Kamichi, Koichi; Moro, Shigeki; Kawabata, Taichi; Naoi, Yasushi (2010-04-06), Rationale for Proposal of N3778
L2/10-135 N3826 Everson, Michael (2010-04-22), Emoticons for FDIS 8
L2/10-137 N3828 Suignard, Michel (2010-04-22), Disposition of comments on SC2 N 4123 (FPDAM text for Amendment 8 to ISO/IEC 10646:2003)
L2/10-132 Scherer, Markus; Davis, Mark; Momoi, Kat; Tong, Darick; Kida, Yasuo; Edberg, Peter (2010-04-27), Emoji Symbols: Background Data
L2/10-138 N3829 Constable, Peter; et al. (2010-04-27), Emoji Ad-Hoc Meeting Report
L2/10-108 Moore, Lisa (2010-05-19), "Consensus 123-C3", UTC #123 / L2 #220 Minutes
N3803 (pdf, doc)"M56.01", Unconfirmed minutes of WG 2 meeting no. 56, 2010-09-24
L2/15-015R2 Davis, Mark; et al. (2015-01-21), Recommended Unicode Glyph / Nameslist changes
L2/15-071R Davis, Mark; Burge, Jeremy (2015-02-03), More Unicode Emoji Glyph changes
L2/15-141 (pdf, html)Davis, Mark; Edberg, Peter (2015-03-31), Emoji Glyph and Annotation Recommendations
L2/15-107 Moore, Lisa (2015-05-12), "Consensus 143-C20", UTC #143 Minutes, Update chart glyphs and annotations based on L2/15-151 for Unicode 8.0.
L2/15-199 Proposed annotation additions for Unicode 9.0, 2015-07-31
L2/16-281 Burge, Jeremy; Hunt, Paul (2016-10-17), Emoji Glyph Updates
L2/16-361 Pournader, Roozbeh; Felt, Doug (2016-11-07), Add text and emoji standardized variation sequences for 96 symbols
6.1U+1F600, 1F611, 1F615, 1F617, 1F619, 1F61B, 1F61F, 1F626..1F627, 1F62C, 1F62E..1F62F, 1F634 [lower-alpha 2] 13 L2/09-007 Lommel, Arle (2008-12-26), Comparison of Emoticons from Major Vendors
L2/09-025R2 N3582 [lower-alpha 3] Scherer, Markus; Davis, Mark; Momoi, Kat; Tong, Darick; Kida, Yasuo; Edberg, Peter (2009-03-05), Proposal for Encoding Emoji Symbols
L2/09-026R N3583 Scherer, Markus; Davis, Mark; Momoi, Kat; Tong, Darick; Kida, Yasuo; Edberg, Peter (2009-02-06), Emoji Symbols Proposed for New Encoding
L2/09-027R2 N3681 Scherer, Markus (2009-09-17), Emoji Symbols: Background Data
L2/10-102 N3790 Summary of Voting on SC 2 N 4123, ISO/IEC 10646: 2003/FPDAM 8, 2010-03-27
L2/10-132 Scherer, Markus; Davis, Mark; Momoi, Kat; Tong, Darick; Kida, Yasuo; Edberg, Peter (2010-04-27), Emoji Symbols: Background Data
L2/10-138 N3829 Constable, Peter; et al. (2010-04-27), "7", Emoji Ad-Hoc Meeting Report
N3803 (pdf, doc)"M56.01", Unconfirmed minutes of WG 2 meeting no. 56, 2010-09-24
L2/15-015R2 Davis, Mark; et al. (2015-01-21), Recommended Unicode Glyph / Nameslist changes
L2/15-071R Davis, Mark; Burge, Jeremy (2015-02-03), More Unicode Emoji Glyph changes
L2/15-141 (pdf, html)Davis, Mark; Edberg, Peter (2015-03-31), Emoji Glyph and Annotation Recommendations
L2/15-107 Moore, Lisa (2015-05-12), "Consensus 143-C20", UTC #143 Minutes, Update chart glyphs and annotations based on L2/15-151 for Unicode 8.0.
7.0U+1F641..1F6422 L2/10-429 Pentzlin, Karl (2010-10-22), Proposal to encode three additional emoticons
L2/11-037 N3982 Proposal to encode three additional emoticons, 2011-01-03
L2/11-253 Whistler, Ken (2011-06-16), "I", WG2 consent docket
N4103 "11.6 Three additional emoticons", Unconfirmed minutes of WG 2 meeting 58, 2012-01-03
L2/23-034 Gawne, Lauren; Daniel, Jennifer (2022-12-16), Head Shaking Horizontally Unicode Emoji Proposal [Affects U+1F642]
L2/23-035 Gawne, Lauren; Daniel, Jennifer (2022-12-16), Head Shaking Vertically Unicode Emoji Proposal [Affects U+1F642]
L2/23-037R Daniel, Jennifer (2023-01-25), Recommendations for ZWJ Sequences, Unicode 15.1 [Affects U+1F642]
L2/23-005 Constable, Peter (2023-02-01), "G.1.1 Emoji 15.1 Recommendations", UTC #174 Minutes
8.0U+1F643..1F6442 L2/14-174R Davis, Mark; Edberg, Peter (2014-08-27), Emoji Additions
L2/14-172R Davis, Mark; Edberg, Peter (2014-08-29), Proposed enhancements for emoji characters: background
L2/14-275 Edberg, Peter; et al. (2014-10-23), Emoji ad-hoc committee recommendations to UTC #141
L2/14-284R2 Edberg, Peter; Davis, Mark (2014-10-28), Emoji-System Compatibility Additions
L2/15-025 N4654 Anderson, Deborah (2014-10-30), Future Additions to ISO/IEC 10646
L2/15-030 Davis, Mark (2015-01-29), Emojipedia top requests
  1. Proposed code points and characters names may differ from final code points and names
  2. 1 2 Refer to the history section of the Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs block for additional emoji-related documents
  3. 1 2 Japanese translation of N3582 is available as N3621

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Emoji</span> Symbols often used as emotional cues in text

An emoji is a pictogram, logogram, ideogram, or smiley embedded in text and used in electronic messages and web pages. The primary function of emoji is to fill in emotional cues otherwise missing from typed conversation. Emoji exist in various genres, including facial expressions, common objects, places and types of weather, and animals. They are much like emoticons, except emoji are pictures rather than typographic approximations; the term "emoji" in the strict sense refers to such pictures which can be represented as encoded characters, but it is sometimes applied to messaging stickers by extension. Originally meaning pictograph, the word emoji comes from Japanese e + moji; the resemblance to the English words emotion and emoticon is purely coincidental. The ISO 15924 script code for emoji is Zsye.

Miscellaneous Symbols is a Unicode block (U+2600–U+26FF) containing glyphs representing concepts from a variety of categories: astrological, astronomical, chess, dice, musical notation, political symbols, recycling, religious symbols, trigrams, warning signs, and weather, among others.

Geometric Shapes is a Unicode block of 96 symbols at code point range U+25A0–25FF.

Letterlike Symbols is a Unicode block containing 80 characters which are constructed mainly from the glyphs of one or more letters. In addition to this block, Unicode includes full styled mathematical alphabets, although Unicode does not explicitly categorize these characters as being "letterlike."

Miscellaneous Technical is a Unicode block ranging from U+2300 to U+23FF, which contains various common symbols which are related to and used in the various technical, programming language, and academic professions. For example:

In computing, a Unicode symbol is a Unicode character which is not part of a script used to write a natural language, but is nonetheless available for use as part of a text.

Supplemental Arrows-B is a Unicode block containing miscellaneous arrows, arrow tails, crossing arrows used in knot descriptions, curved arrows, and harpoons.

Enclosed Alphanumerics is a Unicode block of typographical symbols of an alphanumeric within a circle, a bracket or other not-closed enclosure, or ending in a full stop.

Unicode contains a number of characters that represent various cultural, political, and religious symbols. Most, but not all, of these symbols are in the Miscellaneous Symbols block.

CJK Symbols and Punctuation is a Unicode block containing symbols and punctuation used for writing the Chinese, Japanese and Korean languages. It also contains one Chinese character.

The regional indicator symbols are a set of 26 alphabetic Unicode characters (A–Z) intended to be used to encode ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 two-letter country codes in a way that allows optional special treatment.

Enclosed Alphanumeric Supplement is a Unicode block consisting of Latin alphabet characters and Arabic numerals enclosed in circles, ovals or boxes, used for a variety of purposes. It is encoded in the range U+1F100–U+1F1FF in the Supplementary Multilingual Plane.

Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs is a Unicode block containing meteorological and astronomical symbols, emoji characters largely for compatibility with Japanese telephone carriers' implementations of Shift JIS, and characters originally from the Wingdings and Webdings fonts found in Microsoft Windows.

A variant form is a different glyph for a character, encoded in Unicode through the mechanism of variation sequences: sequences in Unicode that consist of a base character followed by a variation selector character.

Dingbats is a Unicode block containing dingbats. Most of its characters were taken from Zapf Dingbats; it was the Unicode block to have imported characters from a specific typeface; Unicode later adopted a policy that excluded symbols with "no demonstrated need or strong desire to exchange in plain text", and thus no further dingbat typefaces were encoded until Webdings and Wingdings were encoded in Version 7.0. Some ornaments are also an emoji, having optional presentation variants.

Transport and Map Symbols is a Unicode block containing transportation and map icons, largely for compatibility with Japanese telephone carriers' emoji implementations of Shift JIS, and to encode characters in the Wingdings and Wingdings 2 character sets.

Variation Selectors is a Unicode block containing 16 variation selectors used to specify a glyph variant for a preceding character. They are currently used to specify standardized variation sequences for mathematical symbols, emoji symbols, 'Phags-pa letters, and CJK unified ideographs corresponding to CJK compatibility ideographs. At present only standardized variation sequences with VS1, VS2, VS3, VS15 and VS16 have been defined; VS15 and VS16 are reserved to request that a character should be displayed as text or as an emoji respectively.

Supplemental Symbols and Pictographs is a Unicode block containing emoji characters. It extends the set of symbols included in the Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs block. It also includes Typikon symbols.

Symbols and Pictographs Extended-A is a Unicode block containing emoji characters. It extends the set of symbols included in the Supplemental Symbols and Pictographs block.

References

  1. "Unicode character database". The Unicode Standard. Retrieved 2023-07-26.
  2. "Enumerated Versions of The Unicode Standard". The Unicode Standard. Retrieved 2023-07-26.
  3. "UTR #51: Unicode Emoji". Unicode Consortium. 2023-09-05.
  4. "UCD: Emoji Data for UTR #51". Unicode Consortium. 2023-02-01.
  5. "UTS #51 Emoji Variation Sequences". The Unicode Consortium.
  6. "Original Emoji from DoCoMo". FileFormat.info.
  7. "Original Emoji from KDDI". FileFormat.info.
  8. "The default representation of these modifier characters when used alone is as a color swatch. Whenever one of these characters immediately follows certain characters (such as WOMAN), then a font should show the sequence as a single glyph corresponding to the image for the person(s) or body part with the specified skin tone" Draft Unicode Technical Report #51 "UNICODE EMOJI" Version 1.0 (draft 10) eds. Mark Davis (Google Inc.), Peter Edberg (Apple Inc.), 2015-05-08.