The Past and Future of Flag Emoji

[flags image]


         Emoji Flags are dead, long live Emoji Flags 🏁 🏁 🏁

/By Jennifer Daniel, Unicode Emoji Subcommittee Chair/

With Emoji 16.0 submissions <https://unicode.org/emoji/proposals.html> 
open from April 4, 2022 through July 31, 2022, the Unicode Emoji 
Subcommittee members stand with open arms for your future hair pick 
<https://unicode.org/emoji/future/emoji-candidates.html#x1faae>, khanda 
<https://unicode.org/emoji/future/emoji-candidates.html#x1faaf>, and 
pink heart 
<https://unicode.org/emoji/future/emoji-candidates.html#x1fa77> emoji 
proposals (BTW, if you were planning to prepare proposals for those 
concepts, we have some good news for you: they are already Emoij 15.0 
draft candidates <https://unicode.org/emoji/future/emoji-candidates.html>!).

That being said, there is one particular type of emoji for which the 
Unicode Consortium will no longer accept proposals 
<https://unicode.org/emoji/proposals.html#Flags>. Flag emoji of any 
category.

Flag emoji have always been subject to special criteria due to their 
open-ended nature, infrequent use, and burden on implementations. Today 
nine out of ten are in the top twenty most frequently shared flags. (The 
only outlier is Russia.) The addition of other flags and thousands of 
valid sequences into the Unicode Standard has not resulted in wider 
adoption. They don’t stand still, are constantly evolving, and due to 
the open-ended nature of flags, the addition of one creates exclusivity 
at the expense of others.


       Why do flag emoji exist in the first place?

Well, the shorter, more technical answer is: The country flags use a 
generative mechanism, and were encoded early on for compatibility reasons.

The longer answer requires a flashback to the 1990’s. KDDI and SoftBank 
— two Japanese mobile phone carriers — had early emoji sets which 
included 10 country flags: 🇨🇳 🇩🇪 🇪🇸 🇫🇷 🇬🇧 🇮🇹 🇯🇵 🇰🇷 🇷🇺 
🇺🇸¹. A possibly apocryphal explanation is that they were used to 
denote what to grab for dinner: "American 🇺🇸 or Italian 🇮🇹?" (Such 
an innocent time in emoji history, pre-hamburger 🍔 emoji). Alas, as 
Unicode stepped in to create meaningful interoperability 
<https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2009/09027-emoji-backgrnd.pdf> between 
these carrier-specific encodings, they were presented with a problem: 
why should these 10 countries have flag emoji when others do not?

[10 flags image]
The original emoji set included ten flags (shown above).

     ¹ Interestingly, Windows has never supported flag emoji 🔮. So, if
     you are reading this on a Windows device and flags aren't
     displaying, simply refer to the image above of the ten original flag
     emoji.


Various ideas were considered. The Unicode Consortium isn’t in the 
business of determining what is a country and what isn’t. That’s when 
the Consortium chose ISO 3166-1 alpha 2 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2> as the source for 
valid country designations. ISO 3166 
<https://www.iso.org/iso-3166-country-codes.html> is a widely-accepted 
standard, and this particular mechanism represents each country with 2 
letters, such as “US” (For United States), “FR” (France), or “CN” (China).

It wasn’t a perfect solution, but by allowing the 10 flag emoji — and 
the rest of the country flags — to be accurately interchanged between 
DoCoMo, KDDI, SoftBank, Google, and Apple, and others, it worked just fine.


       Why this flag emoji but not that one?

Today, the largest emoji category is flags (Out of only ~3600 emoji, 
there are over 200 flags!). But, did you know that there are over 5,000 
geographically-recognized regions that are also “valid”? These are known 
as subdivision regions 
<https://www.unicode.org/reports/tr35/#unicode_subdivision_id> and are 
based on ISO 3166-2 <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-2>. (These 
include states in the US <https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:code:3166:US>, 
regions in Italy <https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:code:3166:IT>, 
provinces in Argentina <https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:code:3166:AR>, 
and so on.)

First, what does “valid” mean to the Unicode Standard? Well, think of it 
this way. Today, anyone could make a font of 5,000 emoji flags using 
these sequences. They are valid sequences. They are legit sequences. 
They won’t break. Any platform, application, or font can implement them. 
The significant difference here is that valid doesn’t mean they are 
recommended for implementation.

Back to ISO. ISO groups countries in a more formal way than say FIFA or 
The Olympics. For example, the four regions of the UK 
<https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2016/16180r-eng-scot-wales-flags.pdf> are 
regularly used in sport but not recognized in ISO 3166-1. In 2016, the 
Unicode Consortium started looking into solutions to support their 
inclusion (with the technical feasibility of adding more if needed in 
the future). This was the impetus for adding a general mechanism to make 
all ISO 3166-2 codes be valid for flags. However, only three of the 
5,000 ISO 3166-2 codes have widely adopted emoji— England, Scotland, and 
Wales. (Northern Ireland remains in limbo until an “official flag 
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Northern_Ireland>” is formalized).

[3 flags image]
Flags for England, Scotland, and Wales were included in Emoji 5.0

So, with so many “valid sequences”why hasn’t anyone taken advantage of 
this sweet sweet rich flag opportunity?

At the time, in 2016, adding a few flags 
<https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2016/16180r-eng-scot-wales-flags.pdf> 
seemed reasonable but in retrospect was short-sighted. If the Emoji 
Subcommittee recommends the addition of a Catalonia flag emoji, then it 
looks like favoritism unless all the other subdivisions of Spain 
<https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:code:3166:ES> are added. And if those 
are added, what about the subdivisions of Japan 
<https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:code:3166:JP> or Namibia 
<https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:code:3166:NA>, or the Cantons of 
Liechtenstein <https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:code:3166:LI>? The 
inclusion of new flags will always continue to emphasize the exclusion 
of others. And there isn’t much room for the fluid nature of politics — 
countries change but Unicode additions are forever — once a character is 
added it can never be removed. (That being said, font designers can 
always update the designs as regimes change).


       How are flag emoji used?

Flags are very specific in what they mean, and they don’t represent 
concepts used multiple times a day or even multiple times a year. You 
could say flag emoji have transcended the messaging experience and are 
primarily found in more auto-biographical contexts. (Like your TikTok 
bio. Or, maybe you add a flag to your username on Twitter.) But, even 
then flags are not as commonly found in biographical spaces as you may 
expect <https://aclanthology.org/2020.nlpcss-1.22.pdf>. (The top five 
emoji found in Twitter bios? ❤️✨💙💜💛.)

Despite being the largest emoji category with a strong association tied 
to identity, flags are by far the least used 
<https://home.unicode.org/emoji/emoji-frequency/>. (There are 
exceptions: usage of the rainbow flag is above median 
<https://observablehq.com/@jenniferdaniel/unicode-emoji-mirror>!) That 
begs the question, “So, why not encode more identity flags?” Well, we 
have seen the same results for flags as we have seen for other emoji — a 
very long tail of rarely used options. They also tend to change over 
time! In the past six years since adding a Pride Flag to the Unicode 
Standard (2019) it’s already been redesigned. Many times 
<https://www.google.com/search?q=pride+flag&sxsrf=APq-WBteGJv73D9hyC1tjqPfLBXM6fNA_Q:1648053981309&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi9jYHB19z2AhXPj4kEHYacD7gQ_AUoAXoECAEQAw&biw=1439&bih=987&dpr=2>. 
Identities are fluid and unstoppable which makes mapping them to a 
formal unchanging universal character set incompatible.


       Why does usage matter in selecting emoji?

Any emoji additions have to take into consideration usage frequency, 
trade-offs with other choices, font file size, and the burden on 
developers (and users!) to make it easier to send and receive emoji. 
That’s why the Emoji Subcommittee set out to reduce the number of emoji 
we encode in any given year 
<https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2020/20132-esc-process.pdf>. Flags are also 
super hard to discern at emoji sizes — it’s quite easy to send a 
different flag than you intended (and with each additional flag the 
problem gets worse). The simple truth is that if more people used flags 
then there would be more of an argument to encode them. The Unicode 
Standard subset is just not a viable solution here for implementers nor 
users. Fortunately, there are seemingly infinite other ways to exchange 
images of flags that are more flexible and decentralized, such as 
stickers, gifs, and image attachments.


       What is Unicode doing about it?

We realize closing this door may come as a disappointment — after all, 
flags often serve as a rallying cry to be seen, heard, recognized, and 
understood.

The Internet is a different place now than it was in the 90’s — the 
distribution of imagery online is unstoppable! Given how flags are 
commonly used this is a reasonable path forward: If you care to denote 
your affiliation with a region be it geographic, political, or identity 
(or all three) you can add a flag to your avatar image, share videos, or 
send a gif or sticker to razz your friend during a sports game (and of 
course there is always ⚽ ⚽ ⚽ ⚽ ⚽).

[hearts image]
The more emoji can operate as building blocks, the more versatile, 
fluid, and useful they become! Rather than relying on Unicode to add new 
emoji for every concept under the Sun (this is simply not attainable) 
the citizens of the world have proven to be infinitely creative and 
fluid: often using existing emoji like the colored hearts (❤️️ 🧡 💛 💚 
💙 💜 🤎 🖤 🤍) to express themselves. Hearts are among the most 
frequently used type of emoji and the nine colored hearts are often 
juxtaposed next to each other to denote markers of emotion (“I’m sorry 
💙” or “love you ❤️”) and identity or affiliation that are not 
represented with atomic emoji in the Unicode Standard (ex. “Pan African 
pride ❤️️💚🖤”, “Hi I’m bi 💖💙💜”, and yes even sports teams “Go Mets! 
💙🧡” ).

With this in mind, the Emoji Subcommittee has put forth a strategy 
<https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2021/21075-heart-emoji-coverage.pdf> to add 
a pink heart 
<https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2021/21203-pink-heart-emoji.pdf>, a light 
blue heart 
<https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2021/21202-light-blue-heart-emoji.pdf>, and 
agray heart 
<https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2021/21201-gray-heart-emoji.pdf> to the 
Unicode Standard. These are colors commonly found in gender flags 
(gender fluid pride flag), sexuality flags (bisexual pride flag), in 
sports team colors (Go Spurs!) and even some regional flags (Brussels). 
As of this year, these three heart emoji advanced as draft candidates, 
and you can expect them to land on your device of choice sometime next year.

In some ways we have returned to where we first started: Adding three 
new emoji to support a seemingly infinite number of concepts. This time 
if it fails, at least we’ll be left with lots of heart emoji that have 
multiple uses. ❤️🧡💛💚💙💜🤎🖤🤍

------------------------------------------------------------------------


       In light of this change, we’d like to clarify a few additional
       frequently asked questions with regards to emoji flags

*Wait, if a country gains independence and is recognised by ISO, does 
that mean no flag emoji for them?*
Flags for countries with Unicode region codes are automatically 
recommended, with no proposals necessary 
<https://www.unicode.org/emoji/proposals.html#Flags>! First their codes 
and translated names are added to Unicode’s Common Locale Data 
Repository <https://cldr.unicode.org/> [CLDR], and then the emoji become 
valid in the next version of Unicode. These emoji are also automatically 
recommended for general interchange and wide deployment.

*What about flags that change designs for geopolitical reasons?*
Unicode does not specify the appearance of flag emoji. It is the 
responsibility of font designers to update their fonts as politics 
change. EG: no Unicode changes required for 
https://emojipedia.org/flag-mauritania/ 
<https://emojipedia.org/flag-mauritania/>

*My region was assigned a 3166-2 code. Do we have to submit a proposal?*
No, the Emoji Subcommittee is no longer taking in any proposals for 
flags of any kind.

As a recent example, Kurdistan (a subdivision of Iraq) became an 
official subdivision in ISO 3166-2 
<https://www.iso.org/obp/ui/#iso:code:3166:IQ> (IQ-KR) on May 3, 2021. 
The corresponding Unicode subdivision code (iqkr 
<https://github.com/unicode-org/cldr/blob/maint/maint-41/common/validity/subdivision.xml#:~:text=iqdq%20iqka%20iqki-,iqkr,-iqma%20iqmu%20iqna>) 
is slated for release in CLDR v41 on Apr 6, 2022. At that point the flag 
for Kurdistan will officially be valid — any platform, app, or font 
could support it. But that doesn’t mean it automatically gets in the 
queue for everyone’s phone. Only countries with ISO 3166-1 region codes 
are automatically recommended and require no proposal to move forward.

*So what warrants an ISO 3166-1 assignment vs ISO 3166-2?*
ISO 3166-1 is for countries recognized by the United Nations and ISO 
3166-2 is for parts of countries.

*Why is Antarctica part of ISO 3166-1 but Africa isn’t? There seems to 
be no rational explanation with regard to why islands with no 
inhabitants have a flag while regions with millions of people have no 
emoji flag.*
It’s true, there are "Exceptional reservations." Antarctica has an ISO 
3166-1 alpha 2 code: AQ. But WHY does it have an ISO 3166-1 code? 
Because ISO 3166 decided to (ages ago) include it, probably since the 
whole continent is "shared."

For historical reasons, you may see other exceptions like 🇦🇨 AC 
Ascension Island, 🇨🇵 CP Clipperton Island, or 🇩🇬 DG Diego Garcia.

*Why don’t we have asexual, bisexual, pansexual, and non-binary pride 
flags? And if 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 and 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 get Unicode flags, 
surely there’s room for the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flags?*
Before diving into the facts of why these flags are not part of the 
universal character set, we want to first take a moment to consider what 
people mean when they ask these questions and what Unicode means when 
they decline these flag proposals. Because this question is not one we 
take lightly. In the course of world history, groups have used flags as 
a rallying cry to be seen, heard, recognized, and understood. In the 
Unicode Consortium’s mission to digitize the world’s languages, improve 
communication online, and achieve meaningful interoperability between 
platforms, the requests for flags have become a lightning rod for these 
rallying cries.

When people ask for a new flag emoji, we recognize that the underlying 
request is about more than simply a new emoji. And when we say, “We 
aren’t adding more flags,” we are only saying changing the Unicode 
Standard is not an effective mechanism for this recognition.

*What if I submit a proposal for a flag despite this policy?*
Your proposal will not be processed.

*Relevant docs/Further Reading*
https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2021/21128-esc-recs.pdf 
<https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2021/21128-esc-recs.pdf>
https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2021/21167.htm 
<https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2021/21167.htm>
https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2021/21172-esc-recs.pdf 
<https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2021/21172-esc-recs.pdf>
https://www.unicode.org/emoji/proposals.html#Flags 
<https://www.unicode.org/emoji/proposals.html#Flags>
http://www.unicode.org/L2/L2019/19084-trans-flag.pdf 
<https://www.unicode.org/L2/L2019/19084-trans-flag.pdf>

https://blog.unicode.org/2022/03/the-past-and-future-of-flag-emoji.html


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• The Past and Future of Flag Emoji by Karl Williamson