World Emoji Day: History Of The Emoticons In Our Phone And Their Meaning

In the present busy times that are dominated by mobile phones and tabs, emoticons have replaced the texting lingo as people find emojis as a sign language to express emotions in less time. In the run up to the World Emoji Day on July 17, Slack HAS paired up with DuoLingo to survey 9,400 hybrid workers across North America, Asia, and Europe to see how individuals perceive different emojis.

Hyderabad: In today's time, people like to stay connected via messages and emoticons have taken over the 'texting lingo'! People feel emojis are a great way to convey emotional expression better and that's precisely why there are so popularly used by one and all.

The Unicode Consortium has already unveiled the new emojis that would join the existing pool in 2022 with Unicode 14.0 update. There will be a total of 37 new emojis, including a melting face, peeking eye face, biting lip, finger heart, nest, pregnant man, and troll, among others. The update will also add 75 skin tone variations, five scripts, and new emoji sequences.

History of Emojis

● What emojis appear on people’s phones and on their social media platforms is not arbitrary but has been coordinated by the Unicode Consortium since 1995, when the first 76 pictograms were adapted by U.S. nonprofit.

● The Consortium has been overseeing the character inventory of electronic text processing since 1991 and sets a standard for symbols, characters in different scripts and – last but not least – emojis, which are encoded uniformly across different platforms even though styles may vary between providers.

● Even though the first Unicode listings predate them, a 1999 set of 176 simple pictograms invented by interface designer Shigetaka Kurita for a Japanese phone operator is considered to be the precursor of modern-day emojis.

● The concept gained popularity in Japan and by 2010, Unicode rolled out a massive release of more than 1,000 emojis to get with the burgeoning trend - the rest is history

Some emoticons and their meaning:

💀 Skull: - Skull commonly expresses figurative death, but today it is very often used to react to a particularly funny message i.e. "dying from laughter".

😴 - Sleeping face: - One can use this emoji to convey “good night” to a chat

😋 - Yum: - Used when one is about to have a delicious meal, or already had onec

😜 - Stuck out tongue winking eye: - Used when just casually kidding around with jokes and funny conversations

👋 - Waving hand: - Used either at the start or at the end of the conversation

👿 - Angry face with horns: - When the sender of this emoji becomes so angry that they turn into devils with horns

😈 - Smiling face with horns: - When the sender of this emoji is onto something mischievous or wicked

Indians About The Emoticons:It seems many Indian users are confused about some emojis and their exact usage. Ahead of World Emoji Day on July 17, Slack paired up with DuoLingo to survey 9,400 hybrid workers across North America, Asia, and Europe to see how individuals perceive different emojis.

In survey it is found that emojis representing joy, laughter, sorrow, and grief are popular with most people perceiving a common meaning.

😭, 😘 and 🍑 are the top three most confusing emojis, leaving 36 per cent of Indianrespondents confused.

‘Eyes’ 👀 :-

Around 46 per cent of Indian respondents said it means “I see you”.

Around 27 per cent thought that it means “I am looking at this.”

Another 10 per cent believed that it meant “I know” with another ten per cent believing it is used to say “whoa.

😂 :-

45 per cent of survey respondents agreed that this emoji meant “I am crying tears of joy.

32 per cent are of the opinion that it means “that is hilarious.

12 per cent of the survey thinks it means something is “embarrassingly funny.

Indians seemed the be confused between the “loudly crying”(😭) and “face with tears of joy” (😂) emojis

56 per cent of the Indian respondents said they use it to show “sobbing or upset crying,” while 22 per cent believe that the same emoji means “I am crying tears of joy.

😘 :-

52 per cent of respondents believe it means “I love you” romantically

27 per cent see it as a sign of “platonic love”

😉 :-

44 per cent using it to say “I am kidding

28 per cent of the people use it to show they are “feeling flirty

26 per cent believing that it “refers to an inside joke

Number of Emoji's used by year

YEAR	NUMBER OF EMOJIS BY YEAR
1995	76
2000	78
2002	86
2003	94
2005	94
2008	108
2009	139
2010	1145
2012	1158
2014	1263
2015	1624
2016	2389
2017	2628
2018	2789
2019	3019
2020	3363
2021	3633