Friday, May 22, 2015

Unicode 9.0 Candidate Emoji

The Unicode Consortium has accepted 38 emoji characters as candidates for Unicode 9.0, scheduled for release in mid-2016. At this point, these emoji are candidates—not yet finalized—so some may be removed from the candidate list, and others may be added. Names, images, and code points may also change, so these candidates are not yet ready for use in production systems.

These emoji have been accepted as candidates for Unicode 9.0 for a variety of reasons. They may be needed for compatibility with emoji characters in existing systems. For example, the FACE WITH COWBOY HAT was accepted for compatibility with the emoji used in Yahoo Messenger. Some are chosen based on expected high frequency of use or because they are highly popular requests from online communities. Others fill gaps in the existing set of Unicode emoji, as by completing a gender pair.

Many other prospective emoji characters are still being assessed and could be approved in the future. For more information about selection criteria, see Selection Factors in UTR #51, Unicode Emoji.

The images shown below are draft black and white versions for the Unicode 9.0 charts. Once the emoji candidates have been finalized, vendors that support emoji will provide colorful and better-designed displays for each of these. For example, the emoji for shrug might appear as shown on the right.

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Some of these new emoji would take the new emoji modifiers as discussed in Diversity. Some emoji may also get annotations to help guide design and usage. For example, the cucumber emoji could also be used to represent a pickle.

Candidates
Code
Image
Candidate Unicode Name
1F920
FACE WITH COWBOY HAT
1F921
CLOWN FACE
1F922
NAUSEATED FACE
1F923
ROLLING ON THE FLOOR LAUGHING
1F924
DROOLING FACE
1F925
LYING FACE
1F919
CALL ME HAND
1F933
SELFIE
1F91A
RAISED BACK OF HAND
1F91B
LEFT-FACING FIST
1F91C
RIGHT-FACING FIST
1F91D
HANDSHAKE
1F91E
HAND WITH FIRST AND
INDEX FINGER CROSSED
1F930
PREGNANT WOMAN
1F926
FACE PALM
1F937
SHRUG
1F57A
MAN DANCING
1F934
PRINCE
1F935
MAN IN TUXEDO
1F936
MOTHER CHRISTMAS
1F940
WILTED FLOWER
1F6F4
SCOOTER
1F6F5
MOTOR SCOOTER
1F6D1
OCTAGONAL SIGN
1F942
CLINKING GLASSES
1F5A4
BLACK HEART
1F950
CROISSANT
1F951
AVOCADO
1F952
CUCUMBER
1F953
BACON
1F954
POTATO
1F955
CARROT
1F98A
FOX FACE
1F985
EAGLE
1F986
DUCK
1F987
BAT
1F988
SHARK
1F989
OWL