The heart shape is a widely used symbol in the history of writing and printing. It has been included in many systems that organize characters and help computers display them, such as Unicode. Some characters show the heart shape clearly, while others refer to it in a different way.
History
In the 1990s, NTT DoCoMo created a pager designed for teenagers. This pager was the first to allow users to send a pictogram along with text. It only included one pictogram, which was a heart shape. This was believed to be Shigetaka Kurita's first experience with using digital symbols in text. The pager received very good reviews in Asia, encouraging other companies in the region to consider adding pictograms to their text characters. Later, NTT DoCoMo released another pager for business users, but this version did not include the heart pictogram. Many users strongly complained about the missing heart, and some switched to other companies that still offered the heart pictogram. Because of this, NTT DoCoMo decided to add the heart pictogram back.
As emojis became more widely used, Unicode introduced other heart colors. Each heart color has since been assigned a specific meaning.
In early 2022, news sources in the Middle East reported that sending a Red Heart emoji on WhatsApp in Saudi Arabia could be considered harassment. If someone was found guilty, they could face a maximum prison sentence of two years.
Notable characters
The red heart (❤️) emoji is a symbol used to show care and as a way to express love or romance. Surveys by NTT DoCoMo often rank it as the most popular emoji.
The Heart Eyes (😍) emoji is used to show happiness about something. In 2019, the Unicode Consortium reported it as the third most used emoji, following the Red Heart and Face with Tears of Joy emojis. It often appears in lists of the most common emojis.
Unicode 6.0 used black and white images to represent colors, such as yellow, with patterns similar to those in heraldic symbols. When creating the yellow heart emoji ⟨💛⟩, Google misunderstood the dots in Unicode’s reference images ⟨ ⟩ and displayed the emoji as a pink "hairy heart" in version 4.4 KitKat. This mistake was corrected in version 4.4.1 a few months later.
Ideographic scripts
Some writing systems use picture-like symbols to represent hearts.
- U+2F3C KANGXI RADICAL HEART ⼼
- U+5FC3 心 CJK UNIFIED IDEOGRAPH-5FC3 心
- U+13123 EGYPTIAN HIEROGLYPH F034 𓄣
Encoding
A common symbol for showing love or affection is <3. In Unicode, which is a system that helps computers use different symbols, several heart shapes can be used in text.
In Code page 437, which was the first character set used by IBM computers, the number 3 (written as hex code 03) represents the heart suit symbol. However, this same number is also used for a special command called ETX, which can cause the heart symbol to not appear correctly in some situations.
List of heart-related emojis
Heart-shaped emojis that are single Unicode characters can be found in the Miscellaneous Symbols and Pictographs, Supplemental Symbols and Pictographs, and Symbols and Pictographs Extended-A groups.