Hearts in Unicode

Last updated

As a common symbol throughout typographic history, the heart shape has found its way into many character sets and encodings, including those of Unicode. Some characters depict the shape directly, others reference it in a more derived manner.

Contents

History

In the 1990s, NTT DoCoMo released a pager that was aimed at teenagers. The pager was the first of its kind to include the option to send a pictogram as part of the text. [1] [2] The pager only had a single pictogram on its options, which was a heart-shaped pictogram. This is thought to be Shigetaka Kurita's first exposure to the use of digital symbols in text form. The pager received rave reviews in Asia which led to other companies in the region to consider using pictograms in the list of text characters. NTT DoCoMo then released another pager aimed at businesspeople, but this time dropped the heart pictogram from the characters on the pager. Following its release, there was an outcry by users that the pictogram was no longer available, and many customers switched to other providers that had now included a heart pictogram in their markup. This led NTT DoCoMo to reverse their decision and include the heart pictogram. [3]

As the emoji became more popular, other heart colours were launched by Unicode. Since then, each heart color has been given its own meaning. [4]

In early 2022, Middle Eastern news publications suggested that sending a Red Heart emoji on WhatsApp in Saudi Arabia could amount to harassment and if convicted, the sender could serve a maximum sentence of two years in jail. [5]

Notable characters

Red heart

Twemoji2 2764.svg
Noto Emoji v2.034 2764.svg
OpenMoji-color 2764.svg
Emojione1 2764.svg
The Red Heart emoji as it appears on a variety of platforms (clockwise: Twitter's Twemoji, Google's Noto, EmojiOne, OpenMoji)

The red heart (❤️) emoji is an ideogram that is used in communication to express care and as a romantic or love gesture. It is frequently seen as the most popular emoji in surveys conducted by NTT DoCoMo. [6]

Smiling face with heart-shaped eyes

The Heart Eyes (😍) emoji is to express happiness towards something. The Unicode Consortium listed it as the third most used emoji in 2019, behind the Red Heart and Face with Tears of Joy emoji. [7] It frequently appears in the top 10 lists for the most common emoji. [8]

Encoding

A common emoticon for the heart is <3. In Unicode several heart symbols are available in text format:

GlyphDescription HTML code Alt codes
U+2766 FLORAL HEART&#x2766;
U+2767 ROTATED FLORAL HEART BULLET&#x2767;
U+2619 REVERSED ROTATED FLORAL HEART BULLET&#x2619;
U+2661 WHITE HEART SUIT&#x2661; or &#9825;
U+2665 BLACK HEART SUIT in device default representation&#x2665; or &#9829; or &hearts;Alt + 3
♥︎U+2665 BLACK HEART SUIT in explicit plaintext representation&#x2665;&#xfe0e;
♥️U+2665 BLACK HEART SUIT in explicit emoji representation&#x2665;&#xfe0f;
U+2764 HEAVY BLACK HEART in device default representation&#x2764; or &#10084;
❤︎U+2764 HEAVY BLACK HEART in explicit plaintext representation&#x2764;&#xfe0e;
❤️U+2764 HEAVY BLACK HEART in explicit emoji representation&#x2764;&#xfe0f;
U+2765 ROTATED HEAVY BLACK HEART BULLET&#x2765; or &#10085;
U+2763 HEAVY HEART EXCLAMATION MARK ORNAMENT&#x2763; or &#10083;
🎔 U+1F394 HEART WITH TIP ON THE LEFT&#x1f394;

In Code page 437, the original character set of the IBM PC, the value of 3 (hexadecimal 03) represents the heart symbol. This value is shared with the non-printing ETX control character, which overrides the glyph in many contexts.

The single Unicode character heart related emojis can be found on the Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs, Supplemental Symbols and Pictographs, and Symbols and Pictographs Extended-A ranges.

GlyphUnicode nameCodepointsSkin tone variants
♥️Black Heart SuitU+2665 U+FE0F
❣️Heavy Heart Exclamation Mark OrnamentU+2763 U+FE0F
❤️Heavy Black HeartU+2764 U+FE0F
🏩Love HotelU+1F3E9
💌Love LetterU+1F48C
💏KissU+1F48F💏🏻 💏🏼 💏🏽 💏🏾 💏🏿 🧑🏻‍❤️‍💋‍🧑🏽 🧑🏻‍❤️‍💋‍🧑🏾 🧑🏻‍❤️‍💋‍🧑🏿 🧑🏼‍❤️‍💋‍🧑🏻 🧑🏼‍❤️‍💋‍🧑🏽 🧑🏼‍❤️‍💋‍🧑🏾 🧑🏼‍❤️‍💋‍🧑🏿 🧑🏽‍❤️‍💋‍🧑🏻 🧑🏽‍❤️‍💋‍🧑🏼 🧑🏽‍❤️‍💋‍🧑🏾 🧑🏽‍❤️‍💋‍🧑🏿 🧑🏾‍❤️‍💋‍🧑🏻 🧑🏾‍❤️‍💋‍🧑🏼 🧑🏾‍❤️‍💋‍🧑🏽 🧑🏾‍❤️‍💋‍🧑🏿 🧑🏿‍❤️‍💋‍🧑🏻 🧑🏿‍❤️‍💋‍🧑🏼 🧑🏿‍❤️‍💋‍🧑🏽
👨‍❤️‍💋‍👨Kiss: Man, ManU+1F468 U+200D U+2764 U+FE0F U+200D U+1F48B U+200D U+1F468👨🏻‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏻 👨🏻‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏼 👨🏻‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏽 👨🏻‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏾 👨🏻‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏿 👨🏼‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏻 👨🏼‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏼 👨🏼‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏽 👨🏼‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏾 👨🏼‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏿 👨🏽‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏻 👨🏽‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏼 👨🏽‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏽 👨🏽‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏾 👨🏽‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏿 👨🏾‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏻 👨🏾‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏼 👨🏾‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏽 👨🏾‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏾 👨🏾‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏿 👨🏿‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏻 👨🏿‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏼 👨🏿‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏽 👨🏿‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏾 👨🏿‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏿
👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩Kiss: Woman, WomanU+1F469 U+200D U+2764 U+FE0F U+200D U+1F48B U+200D U+1F469👩🏻‍❤️‍💋‍👩🏻 👩🏻‍❤️‍💋‍👩🏼 👩🏻‍❤️‍💋‍👩🏽 👩🏻‍❤️‍💋‍👩🏾 👩🏻‍❤️‍💋‍👩🏿 👩🏼‍❤️‍💋‍👩🏻 👩🏼‍❤️‍💋‍👩🏼 👩🏼‍❤️‍💋‍👩🏽 👩🏼‍❤️‍💋‍👩🏾 👩🏼‍❤️‍💋‍👩🏿 👩🏽‍❤️‍💋‍👩🏻 👩🏽‍❤️‍💋‍👩🏼 👩🏽‍❤️‍💋‍👩🏽 👩🏽‍❤️‍💋‍👩🏾 👩🏽‍❤️‍💋‍👩🏿 👩🏾‍❤️‍💋‍👩🏻 👩🏾‍❤️‍💋‍👩🏼 👩🏾‍❤️‍💋‍👩🏽 👩🏾‍❤️‍💋‍👩🏾 👩🏾‍❤️‍💋‍👩🏿 👩🏿‍❤️‍💋‍👩🏻 👩🏿‍❤️‍💋‍👩🏼 👩🏿‍❤️‍💋‍👩🏽 👩🏿‍❤️‍💋‍👩🏾 👩🏿‍❤️‍💋‍👩🏿
👩‍❤️‍💋‍👨Kiss: Woman, ManU+1F469 U+200D U+2764 U+FE0F U+200D U+1F48B U+200D U+1F468👩🏻‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏻 👩🏻‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏼 👩🏻‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏽 👩🏻‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏾 👩🏻‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏿 👩🏼‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏻 👩🏼‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏼 👩🏼‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏽 👩🏼‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏾 👩🏼‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏿 👩🏽‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏻 👩🏽‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏼 👩🏽‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏽 👩🏽‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏾 👩🏽‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏿 👩🏾‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏻 👩🏾‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏼 👩🏾‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏽 👩🏾‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏾 👩🏾‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏿 👩🏿‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏻 👩🏿‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏼 👩🏿‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏽 👩🏿‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏾 👩🏿‍❤️‍💋‍👨🏿
💑Couple with HeartU+1F491💑🏻 💑🏼 💑🏽 💑🏾 💑🏿 🧑🏻‍❤️‍🧑🏼 🧑🏻‍❤️‍🧑🏽 🧑🏻‍❤️‍🧑🏾 🧑🏻‍❤️‍🧑🏿 🧑🏼‍❤️‍🧑🏻 🧑🏼‍❤️‍🧑🏽 🧑🏼‍❤️‍🧑🏾 🧑🏼‍❤️‍🧑🏿 🧑🏽‍❤️‍🧑🏻 🧑🏽‍❤️‍🧑🏼 🧑🏽‍❤️‍🧑🏾 🧑🏽‍❤️‍🧑🏿 🧑🏾‍❤️‍🧑🏻 🧑🏾‍❤️‍🧑🏼 🧑🏾‍❤️‍🧑🏽 🧑🏾‍❤️‍🧑🏿 🧑🏿‍❤️‍🧑🏻 🧑🏿‍❤️‍🧑🏼 🧑🏿‍❤️‍🧑🏽 🧑🏿‍❤️‍🧑🏾
👨‍❤️‍👨Couple with Heart: Man, ManU+1F468 U+200D U+2764 U+FE0F U+200D U+1F468👨🏻‍❤️‍👨🏻 👨🏻‍❤️‍👨🏼 👨🏻‍❤️‍👨🏽 👨🏻‍❤️‍👨🏾 👨🏻‍❤️‍👨🏿 👨🏼‍❤️‍👨🏻 👨🏼‍❤️‍👨🏼 👨🏼‍❤️‍👨🏽 👨🏼‍❤️‍👨🏾 👨🏼‍❤️‍👨🏿 👨🏽‍❤️‍👨🏻 👨🏽‍❤️‍👨🏼 👨🏽‍❤️‍👨🏽 👨🏽‍❤️‍👨🏾 👨🏽‍❤️‍👨🏿 👨🏾‍❤️‍👨🏻 👨🏾‍❤️‍👨🏼 👨🏾‍❤️‍👨🏽 👨🏾‍❤️‍👨🏾 👨🏾‍❤️‍👨🏿 👨🏿‍❤️‍👨🏻 👨🏿‍❤️‍👨🏼 👨🏿‍❤️‍👨🏽 👨🏿‍❤️‍👨🏾 👨🏿‍❤️‍👨🏿
👩‍❤️‍👩Couple with Heart: Woman, WomanU+1F469 U+200D U+2764 U+FE0F U+200D U+1F469👩🏻‍❤️‍👩🏻 👩🏻‍❤️‍👩🏼 👩🏻‍❤️‍👩🏽 👩🏻‍❤️‍👩🏾 👩🏻‍❤️‍👩🏿 👩🏼‍❤️‍👩🏻 👩🏼‍❤️‍👩🏼 👩🏼‍❤️‍👩🏽 👩🏼‍❤️‍👩🏾 👩🏼‍❤️‍👩🏿 👩🏽‍❤️‍👩🏻 👩🏽‍❤️‍👩🏼 👩🏽‍❤️‍👩🏽 👩🏽‍❤️‍👩🏾 👩🏽‍❤️‍👩🏿 👩🏾‍❤️‍👩🏻 👩🏾‍❤️‍👩🏼 👩🏾‍❤️‍👩🏽 👩🏾‍❤️‍👩🏾 👩🏾‍❤️‍👩🏿 👩🏿‍❤️‍👩🏻 👩🏿‍❤️‍👩🏼 👩🏿‍❤️‍👩🏽 👩🏿‍❤️‍👩🏾 👩🏿‍❤️‍👩🏿
👩‍❤️‍👨Couple with Heart: Woman, ManU+1F469 U+200D U+2764 U+FE0F U+200D U+1F468👩🏻‍❤️‍👨🏻 👩🏻‍❤️‍👨🏼 👩🏻‍❤️‍👨🏽 👩🏻‍❤️‍👨🏾 👩🏻‍❤️‍👨🏿 👩🏼‍❤️‍👨🏻 👩🏼‍❤️‍👨🏼 👩🏼‍❤️‍👨🏽 👩🏼‍❤️‍👨🏾 👩🏼‍❤️‍👨🏿 👩🏽‍❤️‍👨🏻 👩🏽‍❤️‍👨🏼 👩🏽‍❤️‍👨🏽 👩🏽‍❤️‍👨🏾 👩🏽‍❤️‍👨🏿 👩🏾‍❤️‍👨🏻 👩🏾‍❤️‍👨🏼 👩🏾‍❤️‍👨🏽 👩🏾‍❤️‍👨🏾 👩🏾‍❤️‍👨🏿 👩🏿‍❤️‍👨🏻 👩🏿‍❤️‍👨🏼 👩🏿‍❤️‍👨🏽 👩🏿‍❤️‍👨🏾 👩🏿‍❤️‍👨🏿
💒WeddingU+1F492
💓Beating HeartU+1F493
💔Broken HeartU+1F494
💕Two HeartsU+1F495
💖Sparkling HeartU+1F496
💗Growing HeartU+1F497
💘Heart with ArrowU+1F498
💙Blue HeartU+1F499
💚Green HeartU+1F49A
💛Yellow HeartU+1F49B
💜Purple HeartU+1F49C
💝Heart with RibbonU+1F49D
💞Revolving HeartsU+1F49E
💟Heart DecorationU+1F49F
🖤Black HeartU+1F5A4
😍 Smiling Face with Heart-Shaped EyesU+1F60D
😘 Face Blowing a KissU+1F618
😻 Smiling Cat Face with Heart-Shaped EyesU+1F63B
🤍White HeartU+1F90D
🤎Brown HeartU+1F90E
🥰Smiling Face with HeartsU+1F970
🧡Orange HeartU+1F9E1
🩵Light Blue HeartU+1FA75
🩶Grey HeartU+1FA76
🩷Pink HeartU+1FA77
🫀Anatomical HeartU+1FAC0
❤️‍🩹Mending HeartU+2764 U+FE0F U+200D U+1FA79
❤️‍🔥Heart on FireU+2764 U+FE0F U+200D U+1F525

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">NTT Docomo</span> Japanese telecommunications company

NTT Docomo, Inc., also known as Docomo, is a Japanese mobile phone operator owned by the Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT). The name is officially an abbreviation of the phrase, "do communications over the mobile network", and is also from a compound word dokomo, meaning "everywhere" in Japanese. The company is headquartered in Sanno Park Tower, Nagatachō, Chiyoda, Tokyo. Docomo provides phone, video phone, i-mode (internet), and mail services. It is the largest wireless carrier in Japan, with 82.632 million subscribers as of March 2021.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Japanese mobile phone culture</span> Technology culture

In Japan, mobile phones became ubiquitous years before the phenomenon spread worldwide. In Japanese, mobile phones are called keitai denwa (携帯電話), literally "portable telephones," and are often known simply as keitai (携帯).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">No symbol</span> Red circle with a red diagonal line, indicating something is not permitted

The general prohibition sign, also known informally as the no symbol, 'do not' sign, circle-backslash symbol, nay, interdictory circle, prohibited symbol, don't do it symbol, or universal no, is a red circle with a 45-degree diagonal line inside the circle from upper-left to lower-right. It is typically overlaid on a pictogram to warn that an activity is not permitted, or has accompanying text to describe what is prohibited.

An emoji is a pictogram, logogram, ideogram, or smiley embedded in text and used in electronic messages and web pages. The primary function of modern emoji is to fill in emotional cues otherwise missing from typed conversation as well as to replace words as part of a logographic system. Emoji exist in various genres, including facial expressions, expressions, activity, food and drinks, celebrations, flags, objects, symbols, places, types of weather, animals and nature.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Poop emoji</span> Emoji representing a pile of feces

Pile of Poo (💩), also known informally as the poomoji (slang), poop emoji, or poo emoji, is an emoji resembling a coiled pile of feces, usually adorned with cartoon eyes and a large smile. Originating from Japan, it is used as an expression in various contexts. Some possible uses include: as a response of passive aggressive emotion; for comedic value; as commentary on what's bad; or as its literal meaning. The emoji is in the Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs Unicode block: U+1F4A9💩PILE OF POO.

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.

Emoticons is a Unicode block containing emoticons or emoji. Most of them are intended as representations of faces, although some of them include hand gestures or non-human characters.

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–VS4, VS7, 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.

Shigetaka Kurita is a Japanese interface designer often cited for his early work with emoji sets. Many refer to him as the creator of the emoji, a claim that has been clarified in recent years. He was part of the team that created one of the first emojis used solely for communication, a heart-shaped pictogram that appeared on an NTT DoCoMo pager aimed at teenagers. It went on to become the Red Heart emoji.

The implementation of emojis on different platforms took place across a three-decade period, starting in the 1990s. Today, the exact appearance of emoji is not prescribed but can vary between fonts and platforms, much like different typefaces.

The Pistol emoji (🔫) is an emoji defined by the Unicode Consortium as depicting a "handgun" or "revolver".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Face with Heart Eyes emoji</span> Emoji

The Heart Eyes (😍) emoji is an ideogram that is used in communication to express happiness towards something. The Unicode Consortium listed it as the third most used emoji in 2019.

References

  1. "WORLDKINGS - Worldkings News - Asia Records Institute (ASRI) – Shigetaka Kurita: World's first designer created emoji sets". Worldkings - World Records Union. Retrieved 2023-04-28.
  2. "The Origin Of The Word 'Emoji'". Science Friday. Retrieved 2023-04-28.
  3. Mayer, Johanna. "The Origin Of The Word 'Emoji'". Science Friday .
  4. Hsieh, Carina; Varina, Rachel (5 August 2021). "The Color of the Heart Emoji You Send Is Seriously Important". Cosmopolitan . Retrieved 16 August 2022.
  5. Nasrallah, Tawfiq (13 February 2022). "Sending red heart emojis on WhatsApp 'can land user in jail' in Saudi Arabia". Gulf News . Dubai. Retrieved 16 August 2022.
  6. Kraus, Rachel (February 14, 2020). "Heart emoji, ranked". Mashable.
  7. "Frequency of Emoji Use 2019". Unicode.
  8. Silva, Christianna (February 9, 2022). "Tears of joy emoji might be experiencing a renaissance". Mashable.