Cook Islands Emoji & Symbols

The Cook Islands flag emoji 🇨🇰 is not one picture in Unicode but two regional indicator letters, C and K (the islands' ISO code), which phones and apps draw together as the flag. It arrived with almost every other country flag in 2015. On a system without flag support, such as Windows' own emoji font, you see the letters CK instead; the text is the same, so it still shows as the flag on the reader's phone.

The flag is a blue ensign: the Union Jack in the upper corner, recalling the islands' history with Britain and New Zealand, and a ring of 15 white stars on the right, one for each island of the nation. It has flown since 1979; from 1973 to 1979 the islands used a green flag with a ring of 15 gold stars. There is no star-ring emoji, so people paste the colours as 💙🤍 or write the stars with ★ or ⭐. People often ask how many stars are on the Cook Islands flag: fifteen.

Cook Islands symbols: tiare, drums, vaka and the lagoon

🌼 Blossom is the nearest emoji to the tiare māori, the fragrant white Pacific gardenia that is the national flower. Tiare and hibiscus 🌺 are woven into the ei, the flower garlands and crowns placed on visitors at the airport, worn to church and at every celebration, so 🌺 or 🌼 after a name is the most natural Cook Islands touch in a message.

🥁 and 🪘 stand for the pate, the slit log drum, and the drum dance it drives, which Cook Islands teams are famous for across the Pacific. 🛶 Canoe is the vaka, the voyaging canoe: Cook Islanders trace their ancestors to canoes that crossed the Pacific steering by the stars ⭐🌌, and tradition holds that some of the great canoes that settled New Zealand left from Rarotonga. 🏝️ and 🩵 are Aitutaki, whose turquoise lagoon dotted with small islets is the picture on most Cook Islands postcards.

The sea is protected on a vast scale: the Cook Islands declared their waters a shark sanctuary 🦈 in 2012, and the Marae Moana marine park, created in 2017, covers the country's whole ocean zone. Humpback whales 🐋🐳 come up from Antarctic waters each southern winter to calve, and the pearl farms of the northern atolls Manihiki and Penrhyn grow the famous Cook Islands black pearls, which people write as 🦪🖤.

Cook Islands dollar symbol: $, the triangular coin and the $3 note

What is the currency in the Cook Islands? The New Zealand dollar, together with the Cook Islands' own coins and banknotes, which are worth exactly the same; both are written with the plain $ sign, and cents with ¢. The local money has no international currency code of its own and is not exchanged outside the islands, so visitors spend it or swap it before they leave.

Cook Islands money is collected for its oddities: a triangular $2 coin 🔺, a $3 note 💵, and a $1 coin showing Tangaroa, the ancestral god. $ has a key on every keyboard; ¢ is Alt + 0162 on Windows, Option + 4 on a Mac with a US layout and ¢ in HTML.

Cook Islands Māori letters: macrons ā ē ī ō ū and the glottal stop ʻ

The Cook Islands have two official languages, English and Cook Islands Māori (te reo Māori Kūki ʻĀirani), a Polynesian language close to New Zealand Māori and Tahitian; some northern islands, such as Pukapuka, have languages of their own. It is written with a 13-letter alphabet: the five vowels and the consonant letters k m n ng p r t v. Two signs matter beyond plain A–Z. A macron (ā ē ī ō ū) shows that a vowel is held long, and the glottal stop, a catch in the throat, is written ʻ (U+02BB, the same character as the Hawaiian ʻokina), though many people simply type an apostrophe '. Both appear in the language's own name for the country, Kūki ʻĀirani, and the glottal stop in meitaki maʻata, thank you very much. The sound ng, as in English sing, is written as the alphabet letter ng.

To type the macron vowels on Windows, add the Māori keyboard (made for New Zealand Māori, it has the same five macron vowels), then press the ` key followed by the vowel. On a Mac, switch to the ABC Extended input source and press Option + A, then the vowel. On a phone, long-press the vowel. In HTML they are ā ā, ē ē, ī ī, ō ō, ū ū. The ʻ has no key on standard layouts, so copying it from the grid above is easiest. Our New Zealand collection covers the Māori of Aotearoa.

Cook Islands holidays, faith and the emoji people send

Te Maeva Nui, around Constitution Day on 4 August, marks the day in 1965 when the islands became self-governing in free association with New Zealand. It is the biggest event of the year: island teams compete in drum dance, chant and song, and 🇨🇰🎉🥁💃 is all over social media. Gospel Day in October celebrates the arrival of Christianity, and Sunday church ⛪🙏 is central to island life; women often wear finely woven rito hats 👒 to the service, and hymn singing in Māori is famous for its harmonies.

Family milestones are big feasts, often cooked in an umu, an earth oven of hot stones 🔥🪨. A boy's traditional haircutting ceremony ✂️ and a 21st birthday 🎂 are major family occasions, and weddings 💒 and birthdays bring gifts of tivaevae, the bright appliqué and patchwork quilts sewn by groups of women 🧵🪡. Christmas 🎄 and New Year 🎆 complete the year. Many Cook Islanders live in New Zealand 🇳🇿 and Australia 🇦🇺, where Cook Islands Language Week in August brings out the greetings Kia orana 🌺 and Kia manuia.

Cook Islands food emoji and everyday island life

Ika mata, raw fish cured in lime and mixed with coconut cream, is the dish everyone names first: 🐟🥥🍋‍🟩. Rukau, young taro leaves cooked in coconut cream, is 🥬🥥; taro itself has no emoji and borrows 🍠. Poke, a sweet pudding of fruit such as banana or pawpaw with arrowroot and coconut cream, is closest to 🍮, and 🍌🥭🍍 are the fruit of every roadside stall. A fresh drinking coconut 🥥🍹 is the drink, and on Atiu the tumunu, a gathering around home-brewed bush beer 🍺, is a tradition of its own.

On Rarotonga one road runs about 32 km around the island; the island bus 🚌 runs one way as "Clockwise" and the other as "Anti-clockwise", and scooters 🛵 are a very common way to get around. Roosters 🐓 crow everywhere, pigs 🐖 are raised for feasts, and coconut crabs 🦀 live on the outer islands. Inland, the cross-island track 🥾 climbs past Te Rua Manga, the rock spire known as The Needle ⛰️. 🐦 can stand for the kākerōri, Rarotonga's own small flycatcher, brought back from fewer than 30 birds in the late 1980s. Rugby 🏉 is the sport of the islands, alongside outrigger canoe racing 🛶🚣 and fishing 🎣.