Brunei Emoji & Symbols

🇧🇳 the Brunei flag is the first emoji anyone sends for the country, in a bio, under National Day photos or after a football result. Next to it people most often put 👑: Brunei Darussalam is one of the world's few absolute monarchies, and Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, on the throne since 1967, is the 29th sultan of a line that goes back some six centuries. 🇧🇳👑 reads as loyalty to the Sultan and the country together, and 🤴 is used the same way for the royal family.

☂️ and 🪽 look odd on a country page until you see the crest in the middle of the flag: its top is a royal parasol and a pair of wings, so they are the nearest emoji to the national emblem. 💛🤍🖤 are the flag's colours as hearts, a favourite way to sign off a patriotic post, and 🌼 stands in for the simpor, the yellow flower of the coastal scrub that is Brunei's national flower and appears on the one-dollar note.

The rest of the grid follows everyday life: ☪️ 🕌 🤲 📿 🧕 for a Muslim country whose national philosophy is Melayu Islam Beraja (Malay, Islam, Monarchy), 🏘️ 🛶 🚤 for the stilt village on the Brunei River, 🌳 🐒 🌧️ for the rainforest of Temburong, 🛢️ for the oil that made the country rich, and 🥢 🍚 🍗 🌶️ for the national dish and the late-night rice packet everyone grows up on.

Brunei flag emoji 🇧🇳: colours, crest and meaning

The flag is yellow, crossed from the upper hoist to the lower fly by a white and a black diagonal band, with the national crest in red in the centre. Yellow is the colour of the Sultan; the white and black bands stand for his chief ministers. The striped yellow flag dates from 1906, and the crest was added in 1959.

The crest has five parts. The parasol (payung) and the small flag above it stand for the monarchy; the wings of four feathers for the protection of justice, peace, tranquillity and prosperity; the two raised hands for the government's promise to keep the people's welfare; and the crescent for Islam. On the crescent is the motto in Arabic, usually translated "Always in service with God's guidance", and on the ribbon below it the country's name in Jawi, بروني دارالسلام, Brunei Darussalam, "abode of peace".

Like every country flag emoji, 🇧🇳 is not a stored picture but two regional indicator letters, 🇧 and 🇳, for the country code BN. A phone or browser that knows flags draws the pair as one flag; Windows, whose emoji font has no country flags, shows the two letters instead, though the recipient on a phone still sees the flag. The Brunei Darussalam flag emoji people search for is the same 🇧🇳. Its neighbours on a keyboard of flags are 🇲🇾 Malaysia, which surrounds Brunei on land on the island of Borneo, and 🇸🇬 Singapore, whose dollar Brunei shares at par.

Holidays and the emoji people send for them

23 February is National Day, Hari Kebangsaan, which marks independence from Britain in 1984; the parade and celebrations in Bandar Seri Begawan, and the fireworks that mark some anniversaries, bring out 🇧🇳🎆🎇 and "Selamat Hari Kebangsaan!". 15 July, the Sultan's birthday, is the other great royal day, celebrated with 🇧🇳👑🎉 and good wishes for His Majesty.

The Islamic calendar shapes the rest. In Ramadan 🌙 families break the fast together at sunset (🌇🍽️), and mosques fill for the night prayers. At Hari Raya Aidilfitri people ask forgiveness with "Maaf Zahir dan Batin" and visit one another's open houses; for the first days of the festival the gates of the Istana Nurul Iman palace are opened and the Sultan and the royal family receive the public in person. 🕋 belongs to the pilgrims leaving for Mecca and to Hari Raya Aidiladha, and 🤲 to prayer and to every "Amin".

Brunei's Chinese community celebrates Chinese New Year, a public holiday, with 🧧 red packets, 🏮 lanterns and "Gong Xi Fa Cai".

Water village, rainforest and oil: Brunei's places

Kampong Ayer, the water village, is a town of wooden houses on stilts joined by plank walkways on the Brunei River opposite the capital, Bandar Seri Begawan. It has its own schools, mosques and clinics, and people cross to the city in small speedboat water taxis, so 🏘️🛶🌊 and 🚤 are the emoji of a Brunei river morning. Antonio Pigafetta, sailing with Magellan's fleet, described a great city built over the water here in 1521. Above the village rises the golden dome of the Omar Ali Saifuddien Mosque (1958), set in a lagoon, and further out the Jame' Asr Hassanil Bolkiah Mosque with its 29 golden domes: 🕌✨ is the classic caption for both.

Across Brunei Bay, the Temburong district is almost all rainforest. Visitors go up river by longboat to Ulu Temburong National Park and climb a canopy walkway above the trees (🏞️🌳🌿), and since 2020 the long Temburong Bridge (🌉) links the district by road to the rest of the country. In the mangroves around the capital, boat trips at dusk look for proboscis monkeys (🐒) and estuarine crocodiles (🐊); monitor lizards (🦎) and big forest butterflies (🦋) are everyday sights, and rain (🌧️) can come any afternoon of the year.

Oil was struck at Seria in 1929, and oil and gas still pay for much of the country, which is why 🛢️ and ⛽ appear in posts about Brunei; at Seria the Billionth Barrel Monument marks the billionth barrel produced, reached in 1991. Divers post 🤿🐠🪸 from the reefs and wrecks offshore.

Ambuyat, nasi katok and the Brunei table

Ambuyat, the national dish, is a sticky, translucent starch made from the sago palm. It is eaten with a two-pronged bamboo fork called a candas, twirled into a ball and dipped in a sour or spicy sauce, cacah, with fish, greens and sambal on the side; 🥢 is the closest emoji to the candas, so ambuyat is written 🥢🐟🌶️. Nasi katok, rice with a piece of fried chicken and sambal wrapped in paper, is the cheap, filling meal sold day and night; its name is usually explained as "knock rice", from customers knocking on a seller's door late at night: 🍚🍗🌶️.

Market and hawker stalls add 🐟 🦐 🦀 from the sea and the river, 🥥 🍌 🥭 from the kampong gardens, satay skewers (🍢, the nearest emoji), curries and noodles (🍛 🍜) and a cup of sweet coffee or tea (☕) after Friday prayers.

Brunei dollar symbol and Jawi letters: how to type them

Brunei's currency is the Brunei dollar (code BND), divided into 100 sen and written with the dollar sign, $, usually as B$ to tell it from other dollars: B$10. Since a 1967 agreement the Brunei and Singapore dollars are exchanged at par and each is accepted in the other country, so "B$1 = S$1" holds every day. 💵 and 🪙 cover notes and coins. On the US keyboard layout, $ is Shift+4.

Malay, the national language, is written in two alphabets. The Latin one, Rumi, uses plain A–Z with no accents, so there are no special Latin letters to copy. The other is Jawi, the Arabic alphabet adapted for Malay, which Brunei keeps in daily use: it is taught in schools, used on official documents and the crest, and public signs carry Jawi, usually above the Latin text. Jawi adds six letters to the Arabic alphabet for Malay sounds Arabic does not have: چ ca (the ch sound), ڠ nga, ڤ pa, ݢ ga, ڽ nya and ۏ va. Watch the look-alikes: ڠ has three dots where the Arabic غ has one, and ݢ is the preferred Jawi ga, encoded as a keheh with a dot above. Our Malay (Arabic) collection collects Jawi letters, and Malay and English are languages heard in Brunei; Traditional Chinese names a written form of Chinese, not a spoken language.

A computer usually needs a Jawi or Arabic-script layout added in its settings first, so the quickest way is to tap the letter in the grid and paste it; phone users can add a Malay Jawi or Arabic-script keyboard from their keyboard settings or a keyboard app. Jawi is written right to left, and the letters join to their neighbours, so a pasted letter changes shape when it sits inside a word.