Emoji flag sequences
|
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)
| deprecated | replacement[10][11] | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| code | region | flag | code | region | possible rendering |
| AN | Netherlands Antilles | 🇨🇼 | CW | Curaçao | 
|
| 🇸🇽 | SX | Sint Maarten | 
| ||
| 🇧🇶 | BQ | Caribbean Netherlands | 
| ||
| BU | Burma | 🇲🇲 | MM | Myanmar (Burma) | 
|
| CS | Serbia and Montenegro | 🇷🇸 | RS | Serbia | 
|
| 🇲🇪 | ME | Montenegro | 
| ||
| DD | German Democratic Republic | 🇩🇪 | DE | Germany | 
|
| FX | Metropolitan France | 🇫🇷 | FR | France | 
|
| NT | Neutral Zone | 🇸🇦 | SA | Saudi Arabia | 
|
| 🇮🇶 | IQ | Iraq | 
| ||
| QU | European Union | 🇪🇺 | EU | European Union | 
|
| SU | Union of Soviet Socialist Republics | 🇷🇺 | RU | Russia | 
|
| 🇦🇲 | AM | Armenia | 
| ||
| 🇦🇿 | AZ | Azerbaijan | 
| ||
| 🇧🇾 | BY | Belarus | 
| ||
| 🇪🇪 | EE | Estonia | 
| ||
| 🇬🇪 | GE | Georgia | 
| ||
| 🇰🇿 | KZ | Kazakhstan | 
| ||
| 🇰🇬 | KG | Kyrgyzstan | 
| ||
| 🇱🇻 | LV | Latvia | 
| ||
| 🇱🇹 | LT | Lithuania | 
| ||
| 🇲🇩 | MD | Moldova | 
| ||
| 🇹🇯 | TJ | Tajikistan | 
| ||
| 🇹🇲 | TM | Turkmenistan | 
| ||
| 🇺🇦 | UA | Ukraine | 
| ||
| 🇺🇿 | UZ | Uzbekistan | 
| ||
| TP | East Timor | 🇹🇱 | TL | Timor-Leste | 
|
| YD | Democratic Yemen | 🇾🇪 | YE | Yemen | 
|
| YU | Yugoslavia | 🇷🇸 | RS | Serbia |
|
| 🇲🇪 | ME | Montenegro |
| ||
| ZR | Zaire | 🇨🇩 | CD | Congo - Kinshasa | 
|
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]
