Emoticons (Unicode block)

This article will address the topic of Emoticons (Unicode block), which has been of great interest and relevance in various contexts throughout history. Since its origins, Emoticons (Unicode block) has sparked curiosity and debate among experts and fans, generating endless theories, studies and research that seek to fully understand its meaning and impact on society. Over the years, Emoticons (Unicode block) has played a fundamental role in different fields, from culture and art, to science and technology, leaving an indelible mark on humanity. In this sense, it is essential to analyze and reflect on Emoticons (Unicode block), its multiple facets and its influence on the contemporary world.

Emoticons
RangeU+1F600..U+1F64F
(80 code points)
PlaneSMP
ScriptsCommon
Symbol setsEmoji
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:

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 (a horned "imp", monkeys, cartoon cats).

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. KDDI has gone much further than this, and has introduced hundreds more in the space with lead bytes 0xF3 and 0xF4.

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
Official Unicode Consortium code chart (PDF)
  0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F
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:

  • U+FE0E (VARIATION SELECTOR-15) selects text presentation (e.g. 😊︎ 😐︎ ☹︎),
  • U+FE0F (VARIATION SELECTOR-16) selects emoji-style (e.g. 😊️ 😐️ ☹️).

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

Unicode code points Result
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. 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+ 1F645 1F646 1F647 1F64B 1F64C 1F64D 1F64E 1F64F
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 Count L2 ID WG2 ID Document
6.0 U+1F601..1F610, 1F612..1F614, 1F616, 1F618, 1F61A, 1F61C..1F61E, 1F620..1F625, 1F628..1F62B, 1F62D, 1F630..1F633, 1F635..1F640, 1F645..1F64F 63 L2/09-007 Lommel, Arle (2008-12-26), Comparison of Emoticons from Major Vendors
L2/09-025R2 N3582 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
6.1 U+1F600, 1F611, 1F615, 1F617, 1F619, 1F61B, 1F61F, 1F626..1F627, 1F62C, 1F62E..1F62F, 1F634 13 L2/09-007 Lommel, Arle (2008-12-26), Comparison of Emoticons from Major Vendors
L2/09-025R2 N3582 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.
7.0 U+1F641..1F642 2 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
L2/23-035 Gawne, Lauren; Daniel, Jennifer (2022-12-16), Head Shaking Vertically Unicode Emoji Proposal
L2/23-037R Daniel, Jennifer (2023-01-25), Recommendations for ZWJ Sequences, Unicode 15.1
L2/23-005 Constable, Peter (2023-02-01), "G.1.1 Emoji 15.1 Recommendations", UTC #174 Minutes
8.0 U+1F643..1F644 2 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. ^ a b Refer to the history section of the Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs block for additional emoji-related documents
  3. ^ a b Japanese translation of N3582 is available as N3621

See also

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.