This week, the Unicode Consortium is excited to celebrate the calendar emoji, 📅, commonly displayed with July 17th. People are the power driving the popularity of emoji through their innovative use of them to share joy, activities, sports, individuality, and so much more.

Celebrate a favorite emoji or character this week by adopting a character! While many characters have been adopted since the program launched in December 2015, hundreds of emoji haven’t been adopted by anyone at any level, including fantastic ones like clapping hands (👏twelfth👏most👏used👏emoji👏), check box (for all your to-do list dreams), and the loudly crying emoji (I’m so proud of you! 😭). Imagine the possible messages you could send with a gift adoption! For example:

• Congratulations!!!!! 🥂
• Love You! 🖤
• Kisses 💋
• Did you see this👇🏽
• Yes, I adopted this face in your name 🥴
• My bad 😳
• Happy Birthday! To 100 more! 🎂

When you celebrate World Emoji Day this week by sponsoring your favorite emoji or another character for yourself or as a gift, your donation helps the non-profit Unicode Consortium support the world’s many languages and make the digital world more inclusive. The Consortium is funded by membership fees and donations from individuals, corporations, and other organizations. Your donations help support the vital work of the Consortium, making modern software and computing systems support the widest range of human languages. The Consortium will use your donation to improve language support and to preserve digital heritage. For more details, see How Donations are Used.

The New Unicode.org Also Offers Emoji Enthusiasts the Chance to “Adopt a Character”

The Unicode Consortium, a nonprofit that maintains text standards to support all the world’s written languages across every device, today debuted a new look for unicode.org. The redesigned website will make information about the emoji proposal process more easily accessible while encouraging public participation and engagement in all Unicode initiatives.

“Unicode is a global technology standard that is one of the core building blocks of the internet,” said Unicode board member Greg Welch. “Unicode has helped facilitate the work of programmers and linguists from around the world since the 1990s. But with the rise of mobile devices and public enthusiasm for emoji, we knew it was time to redesign the Unicode website to make information more easily accessible, and increase community involvement.”

Emoji were adopted into the Unicode Standard in 2010 in a move that made the characters available everywhere. Today, emoji have been used by 92% of the world’s online population. And while emoji encoding and standardization make up just one small part of the Consortium’s text standards work, the growing popularity and demand for emoji have put the organization in the international spotlight.

“We’ve been working with the Unicode Consortium for several years to open up the emoji proposals process by making it more accessible and understandable,” said Jennifer 8. Lee, co-founder of Emojination. “While I personally found the late-90s aesthetic of the developer-centric Unicode.org site very retro and nerd charming, the new site redesign is a reflection of Unicode’s deep desire to engage the public in its work.”

In addition to offering a clearer picture of the emoji submission and standardization process, the new Unicode.org website offers information about the Consortium and its mission to enable people everywhere in the world to use any language on any device.

“Emoji are just one element of our broader mission,” said Mark Davis, president and co-founder of the Unicode Consortium. “The Consortium is a team of largely volunteers who are dedicated to ensuring that people all over the world can use their language of choice in digital communication across any computer, phone or other device. From English and Chinese to Cherokee, Hindi and Rohingya, the Consortium is committed to preserving every language for the digital era.”

A team of designers from Adobe provided design and branding support, as well as free access to leading design tools, to bring Unicode’s new website to life.

“The Unicode Consortium’s work to keep digitally disadvantaged languages alive is incredibly important,” said Adobe Design Program Manager Lisa Pedee. “We collaborated closely with the Consortium to develop a unique visual brand and streamlined web interface that makes everything from contributing language data to proposing an emoji more accessible, inclusive and user-friendly.”

The Consortium’s recent language work includes adding language data for Cherokee, encoding the Hanifi Rohingya script, and developing the Mayan hieroglyphic script.

The Consortium invites emoji and language enthusiasts to celebrate World Emoji Day on July 17 and “Adopt a Character” to support its ongoing efforts. More than 136,000 characters are up for adoption — including this new Emoji 12.0 additions such as the sloth, the sea otter, the waffle and Saturn.


Those who choose to adopt will receive a custom digital badge they can display to publicly show their support, whether on their website or social media. The Unicode Consortium is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization and “adoption fees” are tax-deductible in the U.S. Additionally, some companies may provide matching funds. Learn more and adopt your character here.

About the Unicode Consortium
The Unicode Consortium is a nonprofit on a mission to enable anyone to use any language across every device, globally. The Consortium develops, extends and promotes the use of the Unicode Standard, freely-available specifications and data that form the foundation for software internationalization in all major operating systems, search applications and the web.

The Unicode Consortium is open to all and comprises individuals, companies, academic institutions and governments. Members include Adobe, Apple, Emojipedia, Facebook, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Netflix, Oracle and SAP, among others. For more information, please visit http://www.unicode.org.

The 157 new Emoji are now available for adoption, to help the Unicode Consortium’s work on digitally disadvantaged languages.

The main goal of the Unicode Consortium is to enable modern software and computing systems to support the widest range of human languages, present and past. There are approximately 7,000 living human languages, but fewer than 100 of these languages are well-supported on computers, mobile phones, and other devices. Adopt-a-character donations are used to improve Unicode support for digitally disadvantaged languages, and to help preserve the world’s linguistic heritage.

For more information on the program, and to adopt a character, see the Adopt-a-Character Page.

And by the way, we have updated charts for the new emoji, with some fixed glyphs (thanks to Emojipedia!).

This holiday season you can give a unique gift by adopting any emoji, letter, or symbol — and help support the Unicode Consortium’s mission to enable all languages to be used on computers. Three levels of sponsorship are available​, starting at $100. With over 130,000 characters to choose from, you are certain to find an appropriate character, for even the most demanding recipient. All sponsors will receive a custom digital badge featuring the adopted character for use on the web and elsewhere. Sponsors at the two highest levels will receive a special thank-you gift engraved with the name you supply and the adopted character.

The program funds work on “digitally disadvantaged” languages, both modern and historic. In 2017 the program awarded grants to support work on Mayan hieroglyphs and historic Indic scripts, among others.

To date, the Adopt-a-Character program has had over 500 sponsors. Be part of the next wave, with a worthwhile gift!

For more information on the program, or to adopt a character, see the Adopt-a-Character Page.

The Adopt-a-Character Program has awarded a grant to support further development of the following three historic scripts in the Unicode Standard:

• Dhives Akuru, a Brahmi-based script formerly used to write the Maldivian language in the Maldive islands
• Elymaic, an Aramaic-based script formerly used in the region southeast of the Tigris river in Iran
• Khwarezmian, a script formerly used in the northern part of Uzbekistan and the adjacent areas of Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan

This grant will fund the development of proposals for encoding scripts that can be included in the Unicode Standard. The work will be done by Anshuman Pandey under the direction of Deborah Anderson (SEI, UC Berkeley) and Rick McGowan (Unicode Consortium).

The Adopt-a-Character program has awarded a grant to support further development of the following four Indic scripts in the Unicode Standard:

• Hanifi Rohingya, a script in current use in Myanmar and Bangladesh
• Nandinagari, a Brahmi-based historic script formerly used in South India
• Old Sogdian, a group of historic scripts formerly used in Kazakhstan, Pakistan, and Western China
• Sogdian, derived from Old Sogdian, a group of historic scripts formerly used in Central Asia

The goal of this grant is to enable the development of encoding proposals that can be included in the Unicode Standard. The work will be done by Anshuman Pandey under the direction of Deborah Anderson (SEI, UC Berkeley) and Rick McGowan (Unicode Consortium).

This holiday season you can give a unique gift by adopting any emoji, letter, or symbol — and help support the Unicode Consortium’s mission to enable all languages to be used on computers. ​Three levels of sponsorship​ are available​, starting at $100. With over 128,000 characters to choose from, you are certain to find an appropriate character, for even the most demanding recipient. All sponsors will receive a custom digital badge featuring the adopted character for use on the web and elsewhere. Sponsors at the two highest levels will receive a special thank-you gift engraved with the name you supply and the adopted character.

The program funds work on “digitally disadvantaged” languages, both modern and historic. In 2016 the program awarded a grant to support work on a proposal for the Hanifi Rohingya script. The program has also funded work on Egyptian hieroglyphs and Mayan hieroglyphs.

In its first year, the Adopt-a-Character program has had nearly 400 sponsors. Be part of the next wave, with a worthwhile gift!

For more information on the program, or to adopt a character, see the Adopt-a-Character Page.

The Adopt-a-Character program has awarded a grant to support further development of Egyptian hieroglyphs in the Unicode Standard. The initial grant allows a Unicode encoding expert to participate in a meeting at the University of Cambridge on Egyptian hieroglyphs. One meeting goal is to progress the representation of ​Unicode ​Egyptian hieroglyphs, including extending ​the repertoire. ​The meeting is hosted by the working group “Informatique et Egyptologie” of the International Association of Egyptologists, and will take place from 11-12 July, 2016.

Egyptian hieroglyphs date from the end of the fourth millennium BCE, and were used for more than 3,000 years. They represent a significant milestone in the world’s written legacy, capturing important literary, historical, and religious works. Egyptian hieroglyphs are studied by academics and also attract interest from the general public, young and old.

In 2009, a core set of Egyptian hieroglyphs was published in Unicode 5.2. In January 2016, three new format control characters, which will aid in the layout of Egyptian hieroglyphs, were approved by the Unicode Technical Committee. The three new format characters, as well as a large preliminary proposal for additional Egyptian hieroglyphs, will be discussed at the Cambridge meeting. The Cambridge meeting is a further step in the process of improving the support of Unicode Egyptian hieroglyphs.

The Unicode Consortium’s Adopt-a-Character program is an opportunity to permanently adopt and dedicate an emoji, letter or any symbol on the keyboard. The new Unicode 9.0 emoji are now available for adoption, including (shrug), (face palm),(crossed fingers), (bacon), and 68 others. The funds help the consortium’s work of supporting the world’s languages in digital form.

We welcome sponsors of the new characters to join existing sponsors like Elastic in helping to further the work of the Unicode Consortium.

The emoji charts have also been updated with these new emoji, and with new images from Messenger, EmojiOne, EmojiXpress, and others. Soon after Unicode 9.0 is released, the other new Unicode 9.0 characters will be available for adoption.

The first grant of funds from Unicode’s Adopt-a-Character program has been awarded to UC Berkeley’s Script Encoding Initiative (SEI), for the first two phases of a project to include Mayan hieroglyphs as Unicode characters.

Thanks go to our sponsors for providing funds to support this grant. Adopting a character helps the Unicode Consortium in its goal to support the world’s languages.

Mayan hieroglyphs were used from 250 BCE until the 1500s. Mayan textual records include historical, literary, religious, and mythological information, as well as a sophisticated mathematical system on par with that of the Romans. Mayan astronomical records continue to capture the attention of astronomers today. Including Mayan hieroglyphs as Unicode characters will allow them to be used on computers around the world. See more about Mayan.

Mayan is a complex script, requiring special support in layout and presentation. The first phase is a catalog and analysis of the Dresden codex, resulting in a draft set of Unicode atomic signs and composition mechanisms needed for full Mayan text. The second phase is based on that analysis: preparation of a proposal for layout and presentation mechanisms in Unicode text, using those atomic elements. These two phases are to be completed in 2017.

Every programmer knows about Unicode. Most other people have no idea what it is, even though they use Unicode every day. Every character you type on your smartphone or laptop — and every character you read — is defined by the Unicode Consortium.

The awareness of the Unicode Consortium has grown recently, with the spread of emoji. But from the news articles, it’s easy to get the impression that emoji is the only thing we do. In reality, there are over 120,000 characters defined, and as you see below, only a small fraction of them are emoji.


For example, this June we’ll be adding 7,500 characters — and of those new characters, fewer than 1% of them are emoji. The majority of the characters are from 6 new scripts: some in modern use, and some historic.

CLDR is the other main project for the Unicode Consortium. It provides the building blocks for supporting a variety of different languages. We’ve just released CLDR v29, and are about to start data submission for v30. Especially if you are a native speaker of a “digitally disadvantaged” language, we encourage you to join the other contributors to CLDR to help with this effort.

The Unicode Consortium is a volunteer-driven 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Some people may work on emoji, while others work on ancient scripts, or Chinese ideographs. Others work on the language support in CLDR, or other projects.