As a common symbol throughout typographic history, the heart shape has found its way into many character sets and encodings, including those of Unicode. Some characters depict the shape directly, others reference it in a more derived manner.
History
In the 1990s, NTT DoCoMo released a pager that was aimed at teenagers. The pager was the first of its kind to include the option to send a pictogram as part of the text. The pager only had a single pictogram on its options, which was a heart-shaped pictogram. This is thought to be Shigetaka Kurita's first exposure to the use of digital symbols in text form. The pager received rave reviews in Asia which led to other companies in the region to consider using pictograms in the list of text characters. NTT DoCoMo then released another pager aimed at businesspeople, but this time dropped the heart pictogram from the characters on the pager. Following its release, there was an outcry by users that the pictogram was no longer available, and many customers switched to other providers that had now included a heart pictogram in their markup. This led NTT DoCoMo to reverse their decision and include the heart pictogram.
As the emoji became more popular, other heart colours were launched by Unicode. Since then, each heart color has been given its own meaning.
In early 2022, Middle Eastern news publications suggested that sending a Red Heart emoji on WhatsApp in Saudi Arabia could amount to harassment and if convicted, the sender could serve a maximum sentence of two years in jail.
Notable characters Red heart
The red heart (❤️) emoji is an ideogram that is used in communication to express care and as a romantic or love gesture. It is frequently seen as the most popular emoji in surveys conducted by NTT DoCoMo.
Smiling face with heart-shaped eyes The Heart Eyes (😍) emoji is to express happiness towards something. The Unicode Consortium listed it as the third most used emoji in 2019, behind the Red Heart and Face with Tears of Joy emoji. It frequently appears in the top 10 lists for the most common emoji.
Hairy heart
Ideographic scripts Some ideographic scripts include pictographs of hearts.
Encoding
A common emoticon for the heart is . In Unicode several heart symbols are available in text format:
Glyph Description HTML code Alt codes U+2766 FLORAL HEART ❦ U+2767 ROTATED FLORAL HEART BULLET ❧ U+2619 REVERSED ROTATED FLORAL HEART BULLET ☙ U+2661 WHITE HEART SUIT ♡ or ♡ U+2665 BLACK HEART SUIT in device default representation ♥ or ♥ or ♥ Alt + 3 U+2665 BLACK HEART SUIT in explicit plaintext representation ♥︎ U+2665 BLACK HEART SUIT in explicit emoji representation ♥️ U+2764 HEAVY BLACK HEART in device default representation ❤ or ❤ U+2764 HEAVY BLACK HEART in explicit plaintext representation ❤︎ U+2764 HEAVY BLACK HEART in explicit emoji representation ❤️ U+2765 ROTATED HEAVY BLACK HEART BULLET ❥ or ❥ U+2763 HEAVY HEART EXCLAMATION MARK ORNAMENT ❣ or ❣ U+1F394 HEART WITH TIP ON THE LEFT 🎔
In Code page 437, the original character set of the IBM PC, the value of 3 (hexadecimal 03) represents the heart suit symbol. This value is shared with the non-printing ETX control character, which overrides the glyph in many contexts.
List of heart-related emojis
The single Unicode character heart related emojis can be found on the Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs, Supplemental Symbols and Pictographs, and Symbols and Pictographs Extended-A ranges.
Glyph Unicode name Codepoints Skin tone variants Black Heart Suit U+2665 U+FE0F Heavy Heart Exclamation Mark Ornament U+2763 U+FE0F Heavy Black Heart U+2764 U+FE0F Love Hotel U+1F3E9 Love Letter U+1F48C Kiss U+1F48F Kiss: Man, Man U+1F468 U+200D U+2764 U+FE0F U+200D U+1F48B U+200D U+1F468 Kiss: Woman, Woman U+1F469 U+200D U+2764 U+FE0F U+200D U+1F48B U+200D U+1F469 Kiss: Woman, Man U+1F469 U+200D U+2764 U+FE0F U+200D U+1F48B U+200D U+1F468 Couple with Heart U+1F491 Couple with Heart: Man, Man U+1F468 U+200D U+2764 U+FE0F U+200D U+1F468 Couple with Heart: Woman, Woman U+1F469 U+200D U+2764 U+FE0F U+200D U+1F469 Couple with Heart: Woman, Man U+1F469 U+200D U+2764 U+FE0F U+200D U+1F468 Wedding U+1F492 Beating Heart U+1F493 Broken Heart U+1F494 Two Hearts U+1F495 Sparkling Heart U+1F496 Growing Heart U+1F497 Heart with Arrow U+1F498 Blue Heart U+1F499 Green Heart U+1F49A Yellow Heart U+1F49B Purple Heart U+1F49C Heart with Ribbon U+1F49D Revolving Hearts U+1F49E Heart Decoration U+1F49F Black Heart U+1F5A4 Smiling Face with Heart-Shaped Eyes U+1F60D Face Blowing a Kiss U+1F618 Smiling Cat Face with Heart-Shaped Eyes U+1F63B White Heart U+1F90D Brown Heart U+1F90E Smiling Face with Hearts U+1F970 Orange Heart U+1F9E1 Light Blue Heart U+1FA75 Grey Heart U+1FA76 Pink Heart U+1FA77 Anatomical Heart U+1FAC0 Mending Heart U+2764 U+FE0F U+200D U+1FA79 Heart on Fire U+2764 U+FE0F U+200D U+1F525 Heart Hands U+1FAF6 Hand with Index Finger and Thumb Crossed U+1FAF0
See also The playing cards in Unicode include characters for the cards of the heart suit of the French deck.
References