Hello, I’m Kodak.
The words emoji and emoticon look so similar that many people assume they share the same origin.
Emoji is a Japanese word made from 絵 (e), meaning “picture,” and 文字 (moji), meaning “character” or “written symbol.”
Its literal meaning is “picture character.”
Is emoji a Japanese word?
Yes. English borrowed emoji from Japanese 絵文字 (えもじ / emoji).
What does emoji literally mean?
絵 (e) = picture or drawing
文字 (moji) = letter, character, or written symbol
Therefore, 絵文字 literally means “picture character” or “pictograph.”
Where does emoticon come from?
Emoticon is an English blend of emotion + icon.
Main difference:
Emoji are graphic characters such as and .
Emoticons are faces made from keyboard characters, such as and :-(.
An emoticon is usually assembled from existing text characters. An emoji is normally treated as a pictographic character of its own.
① why emoji is a Japanese word
② how 絵文字 is divided into two Japanese parts
③ why emoji does not mean “emotion icon”
④ how emoji developed on Japanese mobile phones
⑤ why the “first emoji” story is more complicated than it seems
⑥ where the word emoticon came from
⑦ how emoji, emoticons, kaomoji, stickers, and GIFs differ
⑧ how to use the words emoji and emoticon naturally in English
- 1 Is Emoji a Japanese Word?
- 2 What Does Emoji Mean in Japanese?
- 3 Does Emoji Mean “Emotion Icon”?
- 4 Where Did Modern Emoji Begin?
- 5 How Did Emoji Spread from Japan to the World?
- 6 When Did the Word Emoji Enter English?
- 7 Where Does the Word Emoticon Come From?
- 8 Who Invented the Emoticon?
- 9 Emoji vs Emoticon: What Is the Difference?
- 10 Emoji vs Kaomoji: What Is a Kaomoji?
- 11 Western Emoticons vs Japanese Kaomoji
- 12 Emoji vs Stickers and GIFs
- 13 How Do You Pronounce Emoji?
- 14 What Is the Plural of Emoji?
- 15 How to Use Emoji and Emoticon in English
- 16 Natural Example Sentences
- 17 Common Misunderstandings About Emoji
- 17.1 Misunderstanding 1: Emoji Means Emotion Icon
- 17.2 Misunderstanding 2: Every Emoji Represents a Face or Feeling
- 17.3 Misunderstanding 3: Shigetaka Kurita Unquestionably Invented the First Emoji
- 17.4 Misunderstanding 4: Emoji and Emoticons Are Technically the Same
- 17.5 Misunderstanding 5: Every Picture in a Chat App Is an Emoji
- 17.6 Misunderstanding 6: An Emoji Looks Identical Everywhere
- 18 FAQ About Emoji and Emoticon Origins
- 18.1 Is emoji really a Japanese word?
- 18.2 What does emoji literally mean?
- 18.3 Does emoji come from the word emotion?
- 18.4 What is the difference between an emoji and an emoticon?
- 18.5 Who invented emoji?
- 18.6 When did emoji enter English?
- 18.7 Who invented the emoticon?
- 18.8 Where does the word emoticon come from?
- 18.9 Is kaomoji a type of emoji?
- 18.10 What does kaomoji mean?
- 18.11 What is the plural of emoji?
- 18.12 Are stickers emoji?
- 19 Summary: Is Emoji Japanese, and How Is It Different from Emoticon?
- 20 References
Is Emoji a Japanese Word?
Yes. Emoji is originally Japanese.
In Japanese, it is written:
Hiragana: えもじ
Romaji: emoji
Literal meaning: picture character; pictograph
Modern English borrowed the complete Japanese word, including its basic meaning and pronunciation.
English speakers now use it as an ordinary English noun, just as they use Japanese-derived words such as sushi, tsunami, manga, and karaoke.
絵文字 existed as a Japanese expression for picture-based characters or symbols.
Modern English:
Emoji refers especially to small pictographic characters used in digital communication.
What Does Emoji Mean in Japanese?
The Japanese word 絵文字 consists of two parts.
⇒ picture
⇒ drawing
⇒ illustration
文字 (もじ / moji)
⇒ letter
⇒ written character
⇒ written symbol
絵 + 文字 = 絵文字
⇒ picture + character
⇒ “picture character” or “pictograph”
The word is read えもじ (emoji). The first part is a short Japanese e sound, not the English prefix emo-.
The modern international meaning became especially associated with the digital picture characters used on Japanese mobile phones.
Does Emoji Mean “Emotion Icon”?
No. Emoji is not a shortened form of emotion, and it does not contain the English word icon.
emoji = emotion + icon
Actual Japanese origin:
emoji = e (picture) + moji (character)
English word that really uses emotion + icon:
emoticon
Many emoji express emotion, but others represent food, weather, vehicles, flags, tools, animals, activities, and countless other ideas. The Japanese name refers to their pictorial form—not only to feelings.
❤️
Information or object emoji:
☀️ ⚽
The category is much broader than emotional faces.
Where Did Modern Emoji Begin?
Modern emoji developed in Japan’s mobile-phone culture during the late 1990s.
Unicode explains that emoji became available on Japanese mobile phones in 1999. One especially influential set was the group of 176 symbols designed by Shigetaka Kurita for NTT DOCOMO and released with its mobile services in 1999.
Mobile messages had limited screen space and character capacity
↓
Short text could easily lose tone, mood, and context
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Small pictographs could communicate weather, transportation, feelings, activities, and other information quickly
↓
Japanese mobile carriers developed sets of digital picture characters
↓
These characters became known internationally as emoji
Kurita’s designs used a compact 12-by-12-pixel grid. They included facial expressions, weather symbols, vehicles, zodiac signs, hearts, and other pictograms. The Museum of Modern Art now holds the set in its collection.
Kurita’s 1999 DOCOMO set was highly influential, but evidence documented by Emojipedia shows that J-Phone—later part of SoftBank—released a phone with a set of 90 emoji in 1997.
Was the First Emoji Set Released in 1997 or 1999?
The SkyWalker DP-211SW supported 90 pictographic characters. This currently appears to be the earliest documented mobile-phone emoji set.
1999: NTT DOCOMO
Shigetaka Kurita’s set of 176 emoji was released for DOCOMO’s mobile services. It became widely used and extremely influential in the later history of emoji.
Careful conclusion:
Kurita is a central figure in popularizing and shaping modern emoji, but calling him the uncontested inventor of the first-ever emoji set oversimplifies the evidence.
History often becomes simplified around the most influential surviving example.
How Did Emoji Spread from Japan to the World?
At first, Japan’s mobile carriers used separate and partly incompatible emoji sets. A symbol sent from one carrier could be changed, corrupted, or lost on another system.
Late 1990s: Japanese carriers introduce mobile emoji sets
↓
Different carriers use incompatible character codes
↓
Cross-carrier and international messages create compatibility problems
↓
Technology companies work to map and standardize the characters
↓
2009: Unicode adds the first characters explicitly intended as emoji for one source set
↓
2010: Unicode 6.0 adds hundreds of mobile-phone emoji characters
↓
Smartphone support makes emoji widely available around the world
Unicode 6.0, finalized in 2010, encoded hundreds of symbols used by Japanese mobile phones. Standardization allowed text containing emoji characters to move more reliably between devices, vendors, and internet services.
Apple, Google, Microsoft, Samsung, and other platforms can draw the same encoded emoji in different visual styles.
U+1F600 GRINNING FACE
Different appearance:
Each platform may use its own design, colors, shading, and details.
Result:
The meaning is intended to be shared, but visual differences can sometimes change how users interpret the symbol.
When Did the Word Emoji Enter English?
Merriam-Webster gives 1997 as the first known English use of emoji.
This date refers to the earliest written evidence currently recorded by that dictionary. It does not mean that the word immediately became familiar to the general English-speaking public.
Merriam-Webster’s first known English use of the word.
Late 1990s–2000s:
Emoji remain especially associated with Japanese mobile services.
2009–2010:
Unicode standardization expands technical compatibility.
2010s:
Widespread smartphone and platform support turns emoji into an everyday global English word.
It is safer to report the two facts separately unless the underlying citation is examined.
Where Does the Word Emoticon Come From?
Unlike emoji, emoticon was formed from English words.
a feeling such as happiness, sadness, anger, or surprise
icon
an image or symbol
emotion + icon = emoticon
⇒ a symbol made from keyboard characters that represents a facial expression, attitude, or emotion
Merriam-Webster gives 1987 as the first known use of the word emoticon. Other etymological records show the term clearly in circulation by the early 1990s.
People arranged text characters into expressive shapes before the label emoticon became established.
Who Invented the Emoticon?
Computer scientist Scott Fahlman proposed the sideways character sequence on a Carnegie Mellon University electronic bulletin board on September 19, 1982.
He suggested using it to mark jokes and to mark serious or unhappy messages.
Read sideways as a smiling face.
Originally proposed as a marker for jokes.
Read sideways as a sad or frowning face.
Proposed as a marker for messages that were not jokes.
Fahlman himself says he is the inventor—or at least one of the inventors—of the sideways smiley used in email and online discussion. Typographic faces and playful punctuation existed before 1982.
Emoji vs Emoticon: What Is the Difference?
・originates from Japanese 絵文字
・is a pictographic character or symbol
・examples: ❤️
・can represent emotions, objects, places, activities, weather, flags, and more
・is generally encoded as a character and rendered graphically by a platform
Emoticon
・comes from English emotion + icon
・is assembled from punctuation marks, letters, or other keyboard characters
・examples:
・usually represents a face, expression, mood, or attitude
・remains readable as a sequence of text characters
The conversion does not erase the historical difference between the two forms.
Colon + hyphen + parenthesis
⇒ emoticon made from three text characters
One encoded pictographic character as used in the message
⇒ emoji
(^_^)
Several text characters arranged as an upright face
⇒ Japanese-style emoticon, often called a kaomoji
Emoji vs Kaomoji: What Is a Kaomoji?
Kaomoji is another Japanese-derived word.
face
文字 (もじ / moji)
character or written symbol
顔文字 (かおもじ / kaomoji)
face characters; a face made by combining text symbols
Japanese kaomoji are generally viewed upright rather than sideways.
Sad: (T_T) or (；＿；)
Angry: (｀Д´) or (╬ಠ益ಠ)
Surprised: (O_O) or (°ロ°) !
Shrugging: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The word endings look similar because both emoji and kaomoji contain Japanese 文字 (moji), meaning “characters.”
Western Emoticons vs Japanese Kaomoji
・often read by tilting the head sideways
・the mouth frequently carries much of the expression
・examples:
Japanese-style kaomoji
・usually read upright
・the eyes often carry much of the expression
・can use a wider variety of characters
・examples: (^_^) (T_T) (¬_¬)
Users constantly invent new forms, mix styles, and borrow characters from different writing systems.
Emoji vs Stickers and GIFs
Digital platforms may place emoji, stickers, GIFs, avatars, and reactions in the same menu, but they are not technically identical.
Standardized characters that can be copied as text and displayed in a platform’s visual style.
Sticker
A larger graphic asset supplied by an app or sticker pack. It is usually not a standard text character.
GIF
An image file format often used for short looping animations.
Reaction
A platform feature that attaches an emoji or icon to another message rather than inserting it into ordinary text.
Custom emoji
An image uploaded to a particular service and used like emoji there, but not necessarily part of Unicode.
The technical point is simply that such images may not be standard Unicode characters and may not work outside that platform.
How Do You Pronounce Emoji?
Romaji: emoji
Japanese morae: え・も・じ
Approximate rhythm: e-mo-ji, with three relatively even beats
Common English pronunciation:
approximately ee-MOH-jee
The English pronunciation has been adapted to English stress patterns. The spelling remains close to the Japanese romanization.
When speaking Japanese, use え・も・じ. When speaking English, the ordinary English pronunciation is natural.
What Is the Plural of Emoji?
English uses both emoji and emojis as plural forms.
I added an emoji.
Plural without -s:
The message contains five emoji.
Plural with -s:
The message contains five emojis.
Practical advice:
Both plural forms are established. Use the form preferred by your publication, style guide, or audience, and remain consistent.
The form emojis developed inside English.
How to Use Emoji and Emoticon in English
Using Emoji as a Noun
She added a laughing emoji to the message.
She inserted a pictographic laughing character.
That emoji looks different on my phone.
The same character has a different platform design.
He replied with three heart emojis.
He used three heart-shaped emoji characters.
Using Emoticon as a Noun
He ended the sentence with the emoticon :-).
He used keyboard characters to make a sideways smiling face.
Early online conversations often included text emoticons.
Users expressed tone with punctuation-based faces.
Using Emoji as a Modifier
emoji character
emoji sequence
emoji reaction
emoji design
emoji meaning
emoji support
Natural Example Sentences
The word emoji comes from Japanese.
Its source is the Japanese word 絵文字.
Emoji does not mean “emotion icon.”
The similarity between the two expressions is accidental.
I used the thumbs-up emoji to show agreement.
The pictograph communicated a positive response.
Her phone changed the emoticon into an emoji.
The software replaced the text sequence with a graphic character.
The same emoji may look different across platforms.
Vendors can use different artwork for the same encoded character.
He communicated entirely through emoji.
He used pictographic symbols instead of ordinary words.
That message contains an old-fashioned emoticon.
It includes a face made from punctuation characters.
Kaomoji such as (^_^) are read upright.
Japanese-style text faces do not normally require the reader to tilt their head.
The sticker is not a standard Unicode emoji.
It is an app-specific image rather than a standardized character.
Please do not use ambiguous emoji in the safety instructions.
Important instructions should not depend on symbols that readers may interpret differently.
Common Misunderstandings About Emoji
Misunderstanding 1: Emoji Means Emotion Icon
No. Emoji comes from Japanese e + moji. Emoticon is the word formed from emotion + icon.
Misunderstanding 2: Every Emoji Represents a Face or Feeling
No. Emoji include objects, animals, food, transportation, weather, activities, flags, symbols, and many other categories.
Misunderstanding 3: Shigetaka Kurita Unquestionably Invented the First Emoji
Kurita’s 1999 DOCOMO set was foundational and highly influential. However, a documented J-Phone set from 1997 appears to predate it.
Misunderstanding 4: Emoji and Emoticons Are Technically the Same
They may serve a similar communicative purpose, but emoji are pictographic characters, while emoticons are normally assembled from text characters.
Misunderstanding 5: Every Picture in a Chat App Is an Emoji
Stickers, GIFs, avatars, and app-specific reaction images may not be Unicode emoji characters.
Misunderstanding 6: An Emoji Looks Identical Everywhere
The encoded character may be the same, but each platform can create its own visual rendering.
FAQ About Emoji and Emoticon Origins
Is emoji really a Japanese word?
Yes. English emoji comes from Japanese 絵文字 (えもじ).
What does emoji literally mean?
絵 (e) means “picture,” and 文字 (moji) means “character” or “written symbol.” The literal meaning is “picture character” or “pictograph.”
Does emoji come from the word emotion?
No. The similarity is coincidental. Emoticon, not emoji, is formed from the English words emotion and icon.
What is the difference between an emoji and an emoticon?
An emoji is a pictographic character such as or . An emoticon is built from keyboard characters, such as or :-(.
Who invented emoji?
Shigetaka Kurita designed an influential set of 176 emoji for NTT DOCOMO in 1999. However, evidence shows that J-Phone released a set of 90 emoji in 1997, so calling one person the uncontested inventor of the first emoji oversimplifies the history.
When did emoji enter English?
Merriam-Webster gives 1997 as the first known English use of the word.
Who invented the emoticon?
Scott Fahlman proposed as a joke marker on a Carnegie Mellon University bulletin board on September 19, 1982. Similar typographic ideas existed earlier, so his claim is best understood as the influential computer-network use of that sideways sequence.
Where does the word emoticon come from?
It is an English blend of emotion + icon. Merriam-Webster gives 1987 as its first known use.
Is kaomoji a type of emoji?
Usually not. Kaomoji such as (^_^) are assembled from text characters and are therefore closer to emoticons.
What does kaomoji mean?
It comes from Japanese 顔 (kao), meaning “face,” and 文字 (moji), meaning “character.”
What is the plural of emoji?
Both emoji and emojis are established English plural forms.
Are stickers emoji?
Not necessarily. A sticker is usually an app-specific graphic, while a standard emoji is an encoded character that can be exchanged as text.
Emoji, Emoticon, Kaomoji, or Sticker?
A 3-question check for the right word for that little face or picture.
From Japanese e (picture) plus moji (character).
From English emotion plus icon, not Japanese.
or style.
(^_^) or (T_T) style, Japanese in origin.
Standardized or plain text characters.
Not a standard Unicode character.
※ Emoji does not come from emotion plus icon, that folk etymology actually describes the unrelated English word emoticon.
Summary: Is Emoji Japanese, and How Is It Different from Emoticon?
English emoji comes from Japanese 絵文字 (えもじ).
● Word structure
絵 (e) = picture
文字 (moji) = character or written symbol
絵文字 = picture character or pictograph
● Not emotion + icon
That explanation belongs to emoticon, not emoji.
● Modern history
Mobile emoji developed in Japan in the late 1990s. A J-Phone set is documented from 1997, and Shigetaka Kurita’s influential DOCOMO set followed in 1999.
● Global expansion
Unicode standardization, including hundreds of mobile-phone symbols in Unicode 6.0 in 2010, helped emoji work across platforms and countries.
● Emoji
A pictographic character such as , , or .
● Emoticon
A face or attitude made from text characters, such as or :-(.
● Kaomoji
A Japanese-style text face such as (^_^) or (T_T).
Picture the two Japanese parts instead:
絵 — a picture
＋
文字 — a written character
That simple combination—picture character—explains the word far better than the accidental resemblance to emoticon.
References
- Unicode Technical Standard #51: Unicode Emoji — Japanese word structure, digital representation, Japanese mobile-phone history, and Unicode standardization.
- Unicode 6.0: Support for Popular Symbols in Asia — 2010 encoding of hundreds of mobile-phone emoji characters.
- Merriam-Webster: Emoji — definition, Japanese etymology, pronunciation, plural usage, and first known English use.
- Merriam-Webster: Emoticon — definition, emotion + icon etymology, and first known use.
- The Museum of Modern Art: Shigetaka Kurita, Emoji, 1998–1999 — DOCOMO’s 176-character set, design, and cultural role.
- Emojipedia: Correcting the Record on the First Emoji Set — evidence for J-Phone’s 1997 set of 90 emoji.
- Carnegie Mellon University: Happy Birthday Smiley — Scott Fahlman’s September 19, 1982 proposal.
- Carnegie Mellon University: Original Smiley Thread — recovered bulletin-board discussion containing the and proposal.
- Kotobank: 絵文字 — broader Japanese meanings of picture-based characters and symbols.
- Kotobank: 顔文字 — Japanese definition and examples of kaomoji and Western-style emoticons.
- Online Etymology Dictionary: Emoji — English word history and distinction from emoticon.
- Online Etymology Dictionary: Emoticon — emotion + icon formation and early recorded usage.
