The regional indicator symbols are a set of 26 alphabetic Unicode characters (A–Z) intended to be used to encode ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 two-letter country codes in a way that allows optional special treatment.
These were defined by as part of the Unicode 6.0 support for emoji, as an alternative to encoding separate characters for each country flag. Although they can be displayed as Roman letters, it is intended that implementations may choose to display them in other ways, such as by using national flags.[1][2] The Unicode FAQ indicates that this mechanism should be used and that symbols for national flags will not be directly encoded.[3]
On some systems, two-letter country codes may appear instead of flags.[5]
A pair of regional indicator symbols is referred to as an emoji flag sequence (although it represents a specific region, not a specific flag for that region).[6]
Out of the 676 possible pairs of regional indicator symbols (26 × 26), only 270 are considered valid Unicode region codes. These are a subset of the region sequences in the Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR):[6][7][8]
All 256 regular region sequences in the CLDR
249 officially assigned ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 codes
6 exceptional reservations (Ascension Island, Clipperton Island, Diego Garcia, Ceuta and Melilla, Canary Islands, and Tristan da Cunha)
1 user-assigned temporary country code (Kosovo)
Two of the 35 macroregion sequences in the CLDR (EU and UN)
All 12 deprecated region sequences in the CLDR (strongly discouraged—intended for backward compatibility only)
A separate mechanism (emoji tag sequences) is used for regional flags, such as England 🏴, Scotland 🏴, Wales 🏴, Texas 🏴 or California 🏴[12] It uses U+1F3F4🏴WAVING BLACK FLAG and formatting tag characters instead of regional indicator symbols. It is based on ISO 3166-2 regions with hyphen removed and lowercase, e.g. GB-ENG → gbeng, terminating with U+E007FCANCEL TAG. Flag of England is therefore represented by a sequence U+1F3F4, U+E0067, U+E0062, U+E0065, U+E006E, U+E0067, U+E007F. In the tenth revision the Unicode consortium was considering U+1F3F3🏳WAVING WHITE FLAG instead,[13] but from eleventh onwards it is black.[14] Some vendors choose to include custom zero-width joiner sequences that only show up on their platform, such as WhatsApp and their Refugee Nation Flag 🏳️🟧⬛️🟧.[15]
In 2007 a draft proposal was presented to the Unicode Technical Committee to encode emoji symbols, specifically those in widespread use on mobile phones by Japanese telecommunications companies DoCoMo, KDDI, and SoftBank.[16] The proposed symbols included ten national flags:[17]China (🇨🇳), Germany (🇩🇪), Spain (🇪🇸), France (🇫🇷), the UK (🇬🇧), Italy (🇮🇹), Japan (🇯🇵), South Korea (🇰🇷), Russia (🇷🇺), and the United States (🇺🇸). Encoding these flags but not other countries' flags was considered, by some, as prejudicial.[18] One rejected solution was to encode the ten flags but call them "EMOJI COMPATIBILITY SYMBOL-n" and represent them visually in the Standard as "EC n" instead of showing the flags they represent.[19] Another rejected solution would have allocated 676 codepoints (26×26) for each possible two letter combination of A–Z. They would represent political entities based on ISO 3166 such as "JP" for Japan or Internet ccTLDs (country code top-level domains) such as "EU" for the European Union.[20]
The accepted solution was to add 26 characters for letters used for the representation of regional indicators, which used in pairs would represent the ten national flags and possible future extensions.[2] Per the Unicode Standard "the main purpose of such [regional indicator symbol] pairs is to provide unambiguous roundtrip mappings to certain characters used in the emoji core sets"[21] specifically the ten national flags:[22] 🇨🇳, 🇩🇪, 🇪🇸, 🇫🇷, 🇬🇧, 🇮🇹, 🇯🇵, 🇰🇷, 🇷🇺, and 🇺🇸.
^Andrew West. . Babelstone. Archived from the original on 2014-04-06. Retrieved 2014-08-18.
^ abMichael Everson and Ken Whistler. "N3727: Proposal to encode Regional Indicator Symbols in the UCS" (PDF). Working Group Document, ISO/IEC JTC1/SC2/WG2 and UTC. Retrieved 2014-08-18.
^"Unicode FAQ: Emoji and Dingbats". The Unicode Consortium. 2009-10-28. Retrieved 2014-08-18.
^"Enclosed Alphanumeric Supplement, Range 1F100 - 1F1FF, The Unicode Standard, Version 6.0" (PDF). Unicode Consortium. 2010. Retrieved 2014-08-18.
^"WhatsApp Portal". Copy Paste Dump. R74n. 2020. from the original on 22 June 2021. Retrieved 23 June 2021.
^Momoi, Kat; Davis, Mark; Scherer, Markus (2007-08-03). "L2/07-257: Working Draft Proposal for Encoding Emoji Symbols". Retrieved 2014-08-18.
^"Unicode Mapping for Emoji with Reference to Japanese Carriers, AU/KDDI, DoCoMo, and Softbank" (ZIP archive file format). Retrieved 2014-08-18.
^"L2/09-114 N3607: Towards an encoding of symbol characters used as emoji" (PDF). 2009-04-06. Retrieved 2014-08-18.
^"INCITS/L2/09-304: Comments accompanying the U.S. negative vote on PDAM 8 to ISO/IEC 10646:2003 (SC2 N4078)" (PDF). 2009-08-15. Retrieved 2014-08-18.
^Pentzlin, Karl (2008-08-09). "L2/08-305: Some suggestions about the encoding of national flags as requested by the Emoji proposal" (PDF). Retrieved 2014-08-18.
^The Unicode Standard, Version 6.2, Chapter 15: Symbols(PDF). Unicode, Inc. September 2012. p. 534. ISBN978-1-936213-07-8.
^"Emoji Sources" (plain text). Unicode, Inc. 2013-12-17. Retrieved 2014-08-18.
Further readingedit
Jennifer Daniel (March 28, 2022). "The Past and Future of Flag Emoji 🏁". Did Someone Say Emoji?.
April 11, 2024
regional, indicator, symbol, regional, indicator, symbols, alphabetic, unicode, characters, intended, used, encode, 3166, alpha, letter, country, codes, that, allows, optional, special, treatment, these, were, defined, october, 2010, part, unicode, support, em. The regional indicator symbols are a set of 26 alphabetic Unicode characters A Z intended to be used to encode ISO 3166 1 alpha 2 two letter country codes in a way that allows optional special treatment These were defined by October 2010 as part of the Unicode 6 0 support for emoji as an alternative to encoding separate characters for each country flag Although they can be displayed as Roman letters it is intended that implementations may choose to display them in other ways such as by using national flags 1 2 The Unicode FAQ indicates that this mechanism should be used and that symbols for national flags will not be directly encoded 3 They are encoded in the range U 1F1E6 REGIONAL INDICATOR SYMBOL LETTER A to U 1F1FF REGIONAL INDICATOR SYMBOL LETTER Z within the Enclosed Alphanumeric Supplement block in the Supplementary Multilingual Plane 4 Contents 1 Emoji flag sequences 2 Unicode block 3 Background 4 See also 5 References 6 Further readingEmoji flag sequences editOn some systems two letter country codes may appear instead of flags 5 A pair of regional indicator symbols is referred to as an emoji flag sequence although it represents a specific region not a specific flag for that region 6 Out of the 676 possible pairs of regional indicator symbols 26 26 only 270 are considered valid Unicode region codes These are a subset of the region sequences in the Common Locale Data Repository CLDR 6 7 8 All 256 regular region sequences in the CLDR 249 officially assigned ISO 3166 1 alpha 2 codes 6 exceptional reservations Ascension Island Clipperton Island Diego Garcia Ceuta and Melilla Canary Islands and Tristan da Cunha 1 user assigned temporary country code Kosovo Two of the 35 macroregion sequences in the CLDR EU and UN All 12 deprecated region sequences in the CLDR strongly discouraged intended for backward compatibility only List of current emoji flag sequences flag code region 9 possible rendering AC Ascension Island nbsp AD Andorra nbsp AE United Arab Emirates nbsp AF Afghanistan nbsp AG Antigua amp Barbuda nbsp AI Anguilla nbsp AL Albania nbsp AM Armenia nbsp AO Angola nbsp AQ Antarctica nbsp AR Argentina nbsp AS American Samoa nbsp AT Austria nbsp AU Australia nbsp AW Aruba nbsp AX Aland Islands nbsp AZ Azerbaijan nbsp BA Bosnia amp Herzegovina nbsp BB Barbados nbsp BD Bangladesh nbsp BE Belgium nbsp BF Burkina Faso nbsp BG Bulgaria nbsp BH Bahrain nbsp BI Burundi nbsp BJ Benin nbsp BL St Barthelemy nbsp BM Bermuda nbsp BN Brunei nbsp BO Bolivia nbsp BQ Caribbean Netherlands nbsp BR Brazil nbsp BS Bahamas nbsp BT Bhutan nbsp BV Bouvet Island nbsp BW Botswana nbsp BY Belarus nbsp BZ Belize nbsp CA Canada nbsp CC Cocos Keeling Islands nbsp CD Congo Kinshasa nbsp CF Central African Republic nbsp CG Congo Brazzaville nbsp CH Switzerland nbsp CI Cote d Ivoire nbsp CK Cook Islands nbsp CL Chile nbsp CM Cameroon nbsp CN China nbsp CO Colombia nbsp CP Clipperton Island nbsp CR Costa Rica nbsp CU Cuba nbsp CV Cape Verde nbsp CW Curacao nbsp CX Christmas Island nbsp CY Cyprus nbsp CZ Czechia nbsp DE Germany nbsp DG Diego Garcia nbsp DJ Djibouti nbsp DK Denmark nbsp DM Dominica nbsp DO Dominican Republic nbsp DZ Algeria nbsp EA Ceuta amp Melilla nbsp EC Ecuador nbsp EE Estonia nbsp EG Egypt nbsp EH Western Sahara nbsp ER Eritrea nbsp ES Spain nbsp ET Ethiopia nbsp EU European Union nbsp FI Finland nbsp FJ Fiji nbsp FK Falkland Islands nbsp FM Micronesia nbsp FO Faroe Islands nbsp FR France nbsp GA Gabon nbsp GB United Kingdom nbsp GD Grenada nbsp GE Georgia nbsp GF French Guiana nbsp GG Guernsey nbsp GH Ghana nbsp GI Gibraltar nbsp GL Greenland nbsp GM Gambia nbsp GN Guinea nbsp GP Guadeloupe nbsp GQ Equatorial Guinea nbsp GR Greece nbsp GS South Georgia amp South Sandwich Islands nbsp GT Guatemala nbsp GU Guam nbsp GW Guinea Bissau nbsp GY Guyana nbsp HK Hong Kong SAR China nbsp HM Heard amp McDonald Islands nbsp HN Honduras nbsp HR Croatia nbsp HT Haiti nbsp HU Hungary nbsp IC Canary Islands nbsp ID Indonesia nbsp IE Ireland nbsp IL Israel nbsp IM Isle of Man nbsp IN India nbsp IO British Indian Ocean Territory nbsp IQ Iraq nbsp IR Iran nbsp IS Iceland nbsp IT Italy nbsp JE Jersey nbsp JM Jamaica nbsp JO Jordan nbsp JP Japan nbsp KE Kenya nbsp KG Kyrgyzstan nbsp KH Cambodia nbsp KI Kiribati nbsp KM Comoros nbsp KN St Kitts amp Nevis nbsp KP North Korea nbsp KR South Korea nbsp KW Kuwait nbsp KY Cayman Islands nbsp KZ Kazakhstan nbsp LA Laos nbsp LB Lebanon nbsp LC St Lucia nbsp LI Liechtenstein nbsp LK Sri Lanka nbsp LR Liberia nbsp LS Lesotho nbsp LT Lithuania nbsp LU Luxembourg nbsp LV Latvia nbsp LY Libya nbsp MA Morocco nbsp MC Monaco nbsp MD Moldova nbsp ME Montenegro nbsp MF St Martin nbsp MG Madagascar nbsp MH Marshall Islands nbsp MK North Macedonia nbsp ML Mali nbsp MM Myanmar Burma nbsp MN Mongolia nbsp MO Macao SAR China nbsp MP Northern Mariana Islands nbsp MQ Martinique nbsp MR Mauritania nbsp MS Montserrat nbsp MT Malta nbsp MU Mauritius nbsp MV Maldives nbsp MW Malawi nbsp MX Mexico nbsp MY Malaysia nbsp MZ Mozambique nbsp NA Namibia nbsp NC New Caledonia nbsp NE Niger nbsp NF Norfolk Island nbsp NG Nigeria nbsp NI Nicaragua nbsp NL Netherlands nbsp NO Norway nbsp NP Nepal nbsp NR Nauru nbsp NU Niue nbsp NZ New Zealand nbsp OM Oman nbsp PA Panama nbsp PE Peru nbsp PF French Polynesia nbsp PG Papua New Guinea nbsp PH Philippines nbsp PK Pakistan nbsp PL Poland nbsp PM St Pierre amp Miquelon nbsp PN Pitcairn Islands nbsp PR Puerto Rico nbsp PS Palestinian Territories nbsp PT Portugal nbsp PW Palau nbsp PY Paraguay nbsp QA Qatar nbsp RE Reunion nbsp RO Romania nbsp RS Serbia nbsp RU Russia nbsp RW Rwanda nbsp SA Saudi Arabia nbsp SB Solomon Islands nbsp SC Seychelles nbsp SD Sudan nbsp SE Sweden nbsp SG Singapore nbsp SH St Helena nbsp SI Slovenia nbsp SJ Svalbard amp Jan Mayen nbsp SK Slovakia nbsp SL Sierra Leone nbsp SM San Marino nbsp SN Senegal nbsp SO Somalia nbsp SR Suriname nbsp SS South Sudan nbsp ST Sao Tome amp Principe nbsp SV El Salvador nbsp SX Sint Maarten nbsp SY Syria nbsp SZ Eswatini nbsp TA Tristan da Cunha nbsp TC Turks amp Caicos Islands nbsp TD Chad nbsp TF French Southern Territories nbsp TG Togo nbsp TH Thailand nbsp TJ Tajikistan nbsp TK Tokelau nbsp TL Timor Leste nbsp TM Turkmenistan nbsp TN Tunisia nbsp TO Tonga nbsp TR Turkiye nbsp TT Trinidad amp Tobago nbsp TV Tuvalu nbsp TW Taiwan nbsp TZ Tanzania nbsp UA Ukraine nbsp UG Uganda nbsp UM U S Outlying Islands nbsp UN United Nations nbsp US United States nbsp UY Uruguay nbsp UZ Uzbekistan nbsp VA Vatican City nbsp VC St Vincent amp Grenadines nbsp VE Venezuela nbsp VG British Virgin Islands nbsp VI U S Virgin Islands nbsp VN Vietnam nbsp VU Vanuatu nbsp WF Wallis amp Futuna nbsp WS Samoa nbsp XK Kosovo nbsp YE Yemen nbsp YT Mayotte nbsp ZA South Africa nbsp ZM Zambia nbsp ZW Zimbabwe nbsp List of deprecated sequences deprecated replacement 10 11 code region flag code region possible renderingAN Netherlands Antilles CW Curacao nbsp SX Sint Maarten nbsp BQ Caribbean Netherlands nbsp BU Burma MM Myanmar Burma nbsp CS Serbia and Montenegro RS Serbia nbsp ME Montenegro nbsp DD German Democratic Republic DE Germany nbsp FX Metropolitan France FR France nbsp NT Neutral Zone SA Saudi Arabia nbsp IQ Iraq nbsp QU European Union EU European Union nbsp SU Union of Soviet Socialist Republics RU Russia nbsp AM Armenia nbsp AZ Azerbaijan nbsp BY Belarus nbsp EE Estonia nbsp GE Georgia nbsp KZ Kazakhstan nbsp KG Kyrgyzstan nbsp LV Latvia nbsp LT Lithuania nbsp MD Moldova nbsp TJ Tajikistan nbsp TM Turkmenistan nbsp UA Ukraine nbsp UZ Uzbekistan nbsp TP East Timor TL Timor Leste nbsp YD Democratic Yemen YE Yemen nbsp YU Yugoslavia RS Serbia nbsp ME Montenegro nbsp ZR Zaire CD Congo Kinshasa nbsp A separate mechanism emoji tag sequences is used for regional flags such as England Scotland Wales Texas or California 12 It uses U 1F3F4 WAVING BLACK FLAG and formatting tag characters instead of regional indicator symbols It is based on ISO 3166 2 regions with hyphen removed and lowercase e g GB ENG gbeng terminating with U E007F CANCEL TAG Flag of England is therefore represented by a sequence U 1F3F4 U E0067 U E0062 U E0065 U E006E U E0067 U E007F In the tenth revision the Unicode consortium was considering U 1F3F3 WAVING WHITE FLAG instead 13 but from eleventh onwards it is black 14 Some vendors choose to include custom zero width joiner sequences that only show up on their platform such as WhatsApp and their Refugee Nation Flag 15 Unicode block editMain article Enclosed Alphanumeric Supplement Unicode block Regional indicator symbols subset of Enclosed Alphanumeric Supplement 1 Official Unicode Consortium code chart PDF 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 A B C D E F U 1F100 U 1F1E5 omitted U 1F1Ex U 1F1Fx Notes 1 As of Unicode version 15 1Background editIn 2007 a draft proposal was presented to the Unicode Technical Committee to encode emoji symbols specifically those in widespread use on mobile phones by Japanese telecommunications companies DoCoMo KDDI and SoftBank 16 The proposed symbols included ten national flags 17 China Germany Spain France the UK Italy Japan South Korea Russia and the United States Encoding these flags but not other countries flags was considered by some as prejudicial 18 One rejected solution was to encode the ten flags but call them EMOJI COMPATIBILITY SYMBOL n and represent them visually in the Standard as EC n instead of showing the flags they represent 19 Another rejected solution would have allocated 676 codepoints 26 26 for each possible two letter combination of A Z They would represent political entities based on ISO 3166 such as JP for Japan or Internet ccTLDs country code top level domains such as EU for the European Union 20 The accepted solution was to add 26 characters for letters used for the representation of regional indicators which used in pairs would represent the ten national flags and possible future extensions 2 Per the Unicode Standard the main purpose of such regional indicator symbol pairs is to provide unambiguous roundtrip mappings to certain characters used in the emoji core sets 21 specifically the ten national flags 22 and See also editFlag icons for languagesReferences edit Andrew West What s new in Unicode 6 0 Babelstone Archived from the original on 2014 04 06 Retrieved 2014 08 18 a b Michael Everson and Ken Whistler N3727 Proposal to encode Regional Indicator Symbols in the UCS PDF Working Group Document ISO IEC JTC1 SC2 WG2 and UTC Retrieved 2014 08 18 Unicode FAQ Emoji and Dingbats The Unicode Consortium 2009 10 28 Retrieved 2014 08 18 Enclosed Alphanumeric Supplement Range 1F100 1F1FF The Unicode Standard Version 6 0 PDF Unicode Consortium 2010 Retrieved 2014 08 18 Flags emojipedia com Retrieved 2020 02 04 a b UTR 51 Unicode Emoji Annex B Valid Emoji Flag Sequences Unicode Consortium web 2023 09 05 UTR 35 Unicode Locale Data Markup Language LDML Validity Data Unicode Consortium CLDR v38 Region Validity Data Unicode Common Locale Data Repository CLDR 2020 10 28 1 UCD Emoji Sequence Data for UTR 51 Unicode Consortium 2023 06 05 UTR 35 Unicode Locale Data Markup Language LDML Supplemental Metadata Unicode Consortium CLDR v38 Supplemental Metadata Unicode Common Locale Data Repository CLDR 2020 10 28 2 UTR 51 Unicode Emoji Unicode Consortium 2017 05 18 UTR 51 Unicode Emoji UTS 51 Unicode Emoji WhatsApp Portal Copy Paste Dump R74n 2020 Archived from the original on 22 June 2021 Retrieved 23 June 2021 Momoi Kat Davis Mark Scherer Markus 2007 08 03 L2 07 257 Working Draft Proposal for Encoding Emoji Symbols Retrieved 2014 08 18 Unicode Mapping for Emoji with Reference to Japanese Carriers AU KDDI DoCoMo and Softbank ZIP archive file format Retrieved 2014 08 18 L2 09 114 N3607 Towards an encoding of symbol characters used as emoji PDF 2009 04 06 Retrieved 2014 08 18 INCITS L2 09 304 Comments accompanying the U S negative vote on PDAM 8 to ISO IEC 10646 2003 SC2 N4078 PDF 2009 08 15 Retrieved 2014 08 18 Pentzlin Karl 2008 08 09 L2 08 305 Some suggestions about the encoding of national flags as requested by the Emoji proposal PDF Retrieved 2014 08 18 The Unicode Standard Version 6 2 Chapter 15 Symbols PDF Unicode Inc September 2012 p 534 ISBN 978 1 936213 07 8 Emoji Sources plain text Unicode Inc 2013 12 17 Retrieved 2014 08 18 Further reading editJennifer Daniel March 28 2022 The Past and Future of Flag Emoji Did Someone Say Emoji Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Regional indicator symbol amp oldid 1215957495, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,
