70 Fun Facts About Emoji

The word "emoji" comes from two Japanese words. What do they literally mean?

The resemblance to the English words emotion and emoticon is pure coincidence; the Japanese term originally just meant pictograph.

Which emoji was Oxford Dictionaries' Word of the Year in 2015?

Oxford's research found it made up 20% of all emoji used in the UK that year, and 17% in the US.

Shigetaka Kurita designed 176 emoji in 1999 for the i-mode service of which company?

Kurita drew on manga symbols, weather pictograms, Chinese characters and street signs, working on a 12-by-12-pixel grid.

In 2016 which institution acquired the original 1999 Japanese emoji set for its permanent collection?

The set was shown in an exhibition titled Inbox: The Original Emoji, by Shigetaka Kurita, and returned in the museum's 2025 design-icons show.

On what date is World Emoji Day celebrated each year?

Apple has used the day since 2017 to preview the next batch of emoji coming to iOS.

What did Apple premiere on 17 July 2002, the date shown on its calendar emoji?

Google switched its own calendar emoji to show the same date in 2016; WhatsApp's shows 24 February, the company's founding date.

Who founded the reference site Emojipedia in 2013 and went on to invent World Emoji Day?

Burge said the idea came when Apple added emoji to iOS 6 but never said which ones were new. Stephen Fry called the site "a kind of Académie française for your iPhone".

Scott Fahlman proposed the :-) and :-( emoticons in 1982 on which school's bulletin board?

Fahlman suggested the colon-hyphen-bracket as a label for "attempted humor", to stop jokes being misread on the board.

Which Unicode Standard edition, released in October 2010, added a standard set of 722 emoji?

Feedback from standards bodies in the US, Europe and Japan settled the list; the same release defined the "regional indicator" letters that later became flags.

Which American company first pushed for emoji standardisation, petitioning the Unicode Technical Committee in 2007?

Mark Davis, Kat Momoi and Markus Scherer began the effort; Apple's Peter Edberg and Yasuo Kida joined, and the formal proposal for 625 characters came in January 2009.

Which 2011 iOS version made Apple's emoji keyboard available outside Japan?

Before that, users outside Japan could unlock the keyboard by installing a Japanese app, which is largely how the craze spread to the US.

The skin-tone modifiers added to emoji in 2015 are based on which dermatological classification?

The scale has six types; the two lightest were merged, which is why emoji offer five tones rather than six.

How many skin-tone modifier characters can be attached to a human emoji?

Without a modifier, a human emoji is supposed to render in a deliberately unrealistic colour such as bright yellow, blue or gray.

Flag emoji are not single characters. They are pairs of "regional indicator" letters that spell out what?

Only 270 of the 676 possible letter pairs are valid regions, and Unicode leaves it to each platform to decide which flags to actually draw.

In 2022 the Unicode Consortium stopped accepting proposals for which category of emoji?

New ones in that category are still added automatically whenever a territory gains an ISO 3166-1 code, no proposal needed.

In Japan the 💩 emoji is commonly sent to wish someone what?

The link comes from Kin no Unko, golden poo charms sold in Kyoto: the Japanese word for poo sounds like the word for luck.

The original 2007 Gmail version of the poop emoji had no face, but it did include which detail?

The Doodle artists who drew it worked in a 15-by-15-pixel box using only the colours of the Google logo; a smiling face was added years later.

Among Gen Z texters, the 💀 emoji most often stands for which phrase?

It took over from the laughing-crying face, which younger users came to see as an emoji "for boomers".

A 2016 Emojipedia analysis found what share of peach-emoji tweets actually referred to the fruit?

Apple tried to redesign the peach that year to look less like a backside, met fierce backlash in beta and reversed course before release.

In iOS 10 (2016) Apple redesigned its gun emoji from a realistic revolver into what?

The very next day Microsoft went the other way, swapping its toy ray gun for a real revolver; by 2018 nearly everyone had followed Apple.

Fred Benenson's crowdsourced emoji translation of which novel did the Library of Congress acquire in 2013?

Titled Emoji Dick, it was funded on Kickstarter and translated sentence by sentence by Amazon Mechanical Turk workers.

The short-lived 2014 social app Emojli, built by Tom Scott and Natalie Gray, had what defining restriction?

It began largely as a joke, yet 70,000 emoji-only usernames were reserved by launch day; it shut down in July 2015.

Which celebrity's 2015 emoji app reportedly earned $1 million a minute at launch?

Kimoji offered more than 250 icons and GIFs and grew into a merchandise line, including a fragrance released on World Emoji Day 2018.

Which distinguished actor voiced the character Poop in The Emoji Movie (2017)?

Jordan Peele said he was offered the part first and that the offer helped convince him to retire from acting.

The Emoji Movie became the first animated film ever to win which award at the Golden Raspberries?

It took four Razzies in total, despite grossing $218 million worldwide on a $50 million budget.

Which keyboard shortcut opens the emoji panel on Windows 10 and 11?

It arrived in Windows 10 version 1803; on a Mac the equivalent is Control + Command + Space.

The much-loved "blob" emoji were retired in 2017 with which release of Android?

The blobs had arrived with KitKat in 2013; they later returned as stickers and in Gboard's Emoji Kitchen mash-ups.

Several Apple emoji contain tiny text lifted from which famous Apple ad?

The hidden copy begins "Here's to the crazy ones..."; Apple's emoji glyphs are stored as PNG images at seven different sizes.

Emojination was founded in 2015 after its creators noticed there was no emoji for which food?

Founders Jennifer 8. Lee and Yiying Lu raised the $7,500 Unicode membership fee on Kickstarter and have since co-authored more than sixty proposals, including the disco ball.

The 🦟 emoji was added in 2018 mainly to raise awareness of what?

The following year a drop-of-blood emoji arrived with a similar aim: breaking the stigma around menstruation.

Emojicon, the first convention devoted entirely to emoji, was held in November 2016 in which city?

It came a month after the Museum of Modern Art acquired the original DoCoMo set, capping the year emoji went fully mainstream.

Japanese kaomoji such as (^_^) differ from Western smileys such as :-) in what basic way?

Kaomoji tend to put the expression in the eyes rather than the mouth, and the original (^_^) is credited to Yasushi Wakabayashi in 1986.

Drake's 2021 album Certified Lover Boy has cover art made of twelve emoji showing what?

The pregnant-woman emoji appear in varying clothing colours, hair colours and skin tones.

A 2017 study of 1.2 billion messages found people in which country use heart emoji the most?

The same study found Australians, French and Czechs favoured happy emoji, while Mexicans, Colombians, Chileans and Argentines leaned negative.

Kurita's 1999 emoji set was preceded by a 90-emoji set on a 1997 phone from which Japanese carrier?

The 12-by-12-pixel monochrome set on the SkyWalker DP-211SW covered numbers, sports, moon phases and weather, and already included a pile of poo.

Which company added a 'Ninja Cat' emoji to its operating system in 2016?

The trick uses the invisible zero-width joiner, the same glue that turns separate person, heart and person emoji into a couple. Ninja Cat vanished in the 2021 Fluent redesign.

Which emoji did Cabel Sasser use in his 2011 .la address, 'the world's first emoji domain'?

Emoji domains work through Punycode: browsers see that address as xn--ls8h.la, and only a handful of top-level domains allow them.

By 2021 which emoji had overtaken 😂 as the most used on Twitter, according to Emojipedia?

The shift tracked TikTok users declaring the older favourite an emoji "for boomers" in January of that year.

Which novelist said in 1969 there ought to be "a special typographical sign for a smile"?

He pictured "a supine round bracket", thirteen years before Fahlman actually typed one.

Decode the emoji: 🦁👑. Which 1994 Disney film is it?

The story follows a young prince named Simba who is exiled after his uncle Scar murders his father to seize the throne.

Decode the emoji: 🐷🕸️. Which children's book is it?

E. B. White's 1952 classic has a barn spider spell out "Some Pig" and "Terrific" to save Wilbur from slaughter.

Decode the emoji: 🔍🐠. Which 2003 Pixar film is it?

An overprotective clownfish named Marlin crosses the ocean with the forgetful Dory to recover his son.

Decode the emoji: 🍫🏭. Which Roald Dahl novel is it?

Dahl was inspired by his schooldays at Repton, where Cadbury sent pupils test chocolates to rate.

Decode the emoji: 🐝🎬. Which 2007 animated comedy is it?

Jerry Seinfeld voices Barry B. Benson, a honey bee who sues the human race for stealing honey.

Decode the emoji: 🎈🎈🏠. Which 2009 Pixar film is it?

Widower Carl Fredricksen floats his house to South America on thousands of helium balloons; the film's working title was Heliums.

Decode the emoji: 🐀👨‍🍳. Which 2007 Pixar film is it?

Remy the rat dreams of cooking at Auguste Gusteau's Paris restaurant; the title doubles as the name of a French vegetable stew.

Decode the emoji: 👻🚫. Which 1984 comedy is it?

Dan Aykroyd originally conceived it as a vehicle for himself and John Belushi, roaming through time and space.

Decode the emoji: 🍝🐕🐕. Which 1955 Disney film is it?

It was based on a 1945 Cosmopolitan magazine story called "Happy Dan, the Cynical Dog".

Decode the emoji: 🚢🧊💔. Which 1997 blockbuster is it?

James Cameron's inspiration was his fascination with shipwrecks; he felt a love story was needed to carry the weight of the disaster.

Decode the emoji: ⏰🚗⚡. Which 1985 film is it?

Marty McFly is sent to 1955 in a DeLorean built by Doc Brown and nearly stops his own parents from meeting.

Decode the emoji: 🐻🍯. Which storybook character is it?

A. A. Milne's bear was inspired by a Harrods teddy bought for his son and a real bear named Winnie at London Zoo.

Decode the emoji: 🐍✈️. Which 2006 Samuel L. Jackson thriller is it?

The premise, dozens of venomous snakes loosed on a 747 to kill a witness, became an internet phenomenon before release, and fan feedback shaped reshoots.

Decode the emoji: 🐘🪶. Which 1941 Disney film is it?

Jumbo Jr. is mocked for his oversized ears until he learns they let him fly; his only friend besides his mother is a mouse named Timothy.

Decode the emoji: 🌪️👠🐶. Which 1939 film is it?

Dorothy Gale lives on a Kansas farm with Uncle Henry and Aunt Em before a twister carries her, and Toto, over the rainbow.

Decode the emoji: 🏠🧒🎄. Which 1990 Christmas comedy is it?

Eight-year-old Kevin McCallister is left behind when his family flies to Paris; Warner Bros. shut the production down over budget before Fox picked it up.

Decode the emoji: 🎃👑🎄. Which 1993 stop-motion musical is it?

Jack Skellington, King of Halloween Town, stumbles into Christmas Town; the story began as a Tim Burton poem written in 1982.

Decode the emoji: 🐛🍎🍐🍑🦋. Which picture book is it?

Eric Carle's 1969 book has sold more than 55 million copies; its publisher says a copy is sold every 30 seconds.

Decode the emoji: 👧🐇🕳️. Which 1865 novel is it?

Lewis Carroll's heroine follows a waistcoat-wearing White Rabbit with a pocket watch; John Tenniel drew the 42 original illustrations.

Decode the emoji: 🏹🔥🍞. Which young-adult book series is it?

Suzanne Collins's Panem forces each of 12 districts to send two children to an annual televised fight to the death.

Decode the emoji: 🌧️🐱🐶. Which English idiom is it?

Nobody knows where the phrase comes from; a version with "polecats" has been recorded since the 17th century.

A lone 🐞 is common emoji shorthand for which band, whose name puns on an insect?

Before settling on the famous spelling, the Liverpool group briefly played as the Silver Beetles in 1960.

Decode the emoji: 🧙💍🌋. Which fantasy epic is it?

The wizard Gandalf and the Fellowship escort Frodo so he can destroy the One Ring in the fires of Mount Doom.

Decode the emoji: 🧜‍♀️🦀🐟. Which 1989 Disney film is it?

Loosely based on Hans Christian Andersen's 1837 fairy tale, it was written and directed by John Musker and Ron Clements with songs by Howard Ashman and Alan Menken.

The IBM PC's Code page 437 character set included two simple smiling faces as early as which year?

Microsoft's Wingdings font followed in 1990, letting users send pictographs in rich-text messages.

How large were the 90 monochrome emoji on SoftBank's 1997 J-Phone SkyWalker DP-211SW?

They depicted numbers, sports, moon phases and weather, and already included the Pile of Poo, but the phone sold poorly.

In 1995, Le Monde announced an Alcatel phone whose welcome screen showed what instead of text?

The phone was the BC 600; most devices of the era greeted users with a plain text welcome message.

How many smileys did Nicolas Loufrani seek to register with the US Copyright Office in 1999?

His Smiley Dictionary had grown to 887 smileys and 640 ASCII emoticons by 2003.

Which invisible character is placed between emoji so that a man, woman and girl display as one family emoji?

Systems that do not support the sequence simply show the three base emoji in a row.

How many emoji in total does Unicode 17.0 specify?

They use 1,438 characters across 24 blocks, including 26 regional indicators that pair up to form flags.

Which font family supplies Windows's full-colour pictographs, first shipped with the Windows 8 Preview?

An earlier update had given Windows 7 only a monochrome subset via the Segoe UI Symbol font.