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© emoji by OpenMoji
Today, July 17th, is World Emoji Day — because that’s the date on the little calendar emoji. These cartoon graphics can show everything from smiley faces to plants, hearts, and of course, birds. In fact, some of those bird emoji were among the very first emoji ever made!
BirdNote®
Bird Emoji
Written by Ariana Remmel
This is BirdNote.
[Text Message Sound Effects]
Today, July 17th, is World Emoji Day — because that’s the date on the little calendar emoji. These cartoon graphics can show everything from smiley faces to plants, hearts, and of course, birds. In fact, some of those bird emoji were among the very first emoji ever made!
Our modern emoji trace their roots to the 80s and 90s when PDAs and brick-shaped cell phones were first taking off. For most of the world, these devices could only display pixilated letters and numbers on black-and-grey screens. But in Japan, several electronics companies also designed small, digital icons that users could type and share in texts.
It’s difficult to pin down the first true emoji, but two of the earliest adopters both included a bird in their emoji sets. In 1988, the Sharp Corporation published theirs with a rooster from the Chinese zodiac, and added a generic bird a few years later. In 1997, the company SoftBank created its own set that included a very cute penguin.
About a decade later, Softbank partnered with Apple to launch the iPhone in Japan — complete with an emoji keyboard. That feature would go on to become standard on mobile devices worldwide and now offers more than a dozen bird-related emoji to choose from.
So on this World Emoji Day, let’s celebrate the penguin, rooster, and all our emoji for the icons they are!
For BirdNote, I’m Ariana Remmel.
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Senior Producer: Mark Bramhill
Producer: Sam Johnson
Managing Editor: Jazzi Johnson
Managing Producer: Ariana Remmel
Content Director: Jonese Franklin
BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2025 BirdNote July 2025
Narrator: Ariana Remmel
ID# emoji-01-2025-07-17 emoji-01
Reference:
https://blog.emojipedia.org/correcting-the-record-on-the-first-emoji-set/
https://blog.emojipedia.org/new-earliest-emoji-sets-from-1988-and-1990-uncovered/
