Cyprus Emoji & Symbols

The Cyprus flag emoji 🇨🇾 shows the national flag: a white field with the island drawn in a copper-orange colour, and beneath it two crossed green olive branches. Cyprus and Kosovo are the only two countries whose flags carry a map of the country. The flag was adopted in 1960, when Cyprus became independent, and was chosen to belong to neither of its two communities: the white and the olive branches stand for peace between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots, and the copper recalls the metal the island was famous for in antiquity.

Like every country flag, 🇨🇾 is not a single character but two regional indicator letters, 🇨 and 🇾, the country code CY. Phones and Macs draw the pair as the flag; Windows has no flag pictures in its emoji font and shows the letters CY instead. Copy it anyway: a friend on a phone will see the flag.

There is no Cyprus heart emoji, so people spell the flag in colours: 🧡🤍💚, copper, white and olive green. 🕊️ and 🫒 are the flag's message of peace on their own, and 🏝️ stands for the island.

Halloumi, souvla and Cypriot food in emoji

🧀 is the halloumi emoji: there is no halloumi of its own, so the cheese wedge does the job. Halloumi, hellim in Turkish, is a squeaky brined cheese made from sheep's and/or goat's milk, sometimes blended with cow's milk, that holds its shape on a hot grill. It is eaten fried for breakfast, grilled inside pitta 🫓🥙, and in summer with cold watermelon 🍉. Since 2021 it is a protected name in the European Union, registered in both Greek and Turkish as Χαλλούμι and Hellim.

🍢 stands for souvlaki and sheftalia, the small skewers and pork sausages grilled over charcoal 🔥, and 🍖 for souvla, big chunks of lamb or pork turned slowly on long skewers on Sundays and holidays. A meze 🍽️ is a long run of small plates: village salad 🥗🍅🥒, the famous Cyprus potatoes 🥔 grown in red soil, grilled octopus 🐙, calamari 🦑 and fish 🐟 by the sea.

For something sweet, 🍬 is loukoumi, the Cyprus delight of the village of Geroskipou near Paphos, 🍯 the honey syrup on loukoumades, and 🥧 the flaouna, the Easter cheese pastry. Lemons 🍋 and oranges 🍊 grow all over the island. 🍷 is Commandaria, a sweet wine named after the Knights' Commandery at Kolossi and among the oldest named wines still made, 🥃 is zivania, the clear grape spirit, and ☕ the small, thick Cypriot coffee of the village coffee shop, the kafeneio.

Cyprus symbols: the euro €, the Cypriot pound £ and the lira ₺

The Cyprus currency symbol is the euro sign €. Cyprus joined the European Union 🇪🇺 in 2004 and replaced the Cypriot pound with the euro on 1 January 2008. The Cypriot euro coins 🪙 carry three national pictures: the mouflon, the island's wild sheep 🐏, on the 1, 2 and 5 cent coins; the ancient Kyrenia ship on the 10, 20 and 50 cent coins; and the cross-shaped prehistoric idol of Pomos on the €1 and €2.

Before the euro, Cyprus used the Cypriot pound, written £ or C£. In the north of the island, which has been under a separate Turkish Cypriot administration since 1974, people pay in Turkish lira, written ₺.

The national symbols beyond the flag are the olive branch and dove of peace 🕊️🫒, the copper of the island's name, and the mouflon 🐏. The English word copper itself comes from the Latin for "metal of Cyprus".

Greek and Turkish letters: Κύπρος and Kıbrıs

Cyprus has two official languages, Greek and Turkish. By CLDR estimates about 1.3 million people on the island speak Greek, around 300,000 speak Turkish, and English, a legacy of British rule until 1960, is understood by close to a million. In Greek the country is Κύπρος (Kýpros), with an accented ύ and the final sigma ς; in Turkish it is Kıbrıs, with the dotless ı.

Greek is written in the Greek alphabet of 24 letters, Α α to Ω ω. Since 1982 it uses one accent, the tonos, on the stressed vowel of every word of more than one syllable: ά έ ή ί ό ύ ώ. The dialytika ϊ ϋ shows that a vowel is said separately, and σ becomes ς at the end of a word. Greek asks questions with ; (so Τι κάνεις; means "How are you?") and uses the raised dot · where English has a semicolon. Cypriot Greek has its own sounds and words and often writes them with τζ, as in τζαι, the Cypriot "and".

Turkish uses the Latin alphabet with six letters of its own: ç (ch), ş (sh), ğ, which lengthens the vowel before it, ö, ü, and the pair İ i / I ı: dotted and dotless i are different letters, so the capital of i is İ and the small form of I is ı.

To type them, add the Greek or Turkish keyboard in your phone or computer settings. On the Greek keyboard, press the key where ; is on an English keyboard and then a vowel for the tonos (ά), Shift with that key for the dialytika (ϊ); the Q key types the Greek question mark ;. On Windows without a Turkish keyboard, Alt + 0231 types ç, 0246 ö and 0252 ü; for ğ, ş, ı and İ type 011F, 015F, 0131 or 0130 in Word and press Alt + X. On a phone, long-press the letter, or copy it from the grid above. The full sets are in the Greek and Turkish collections.

Cyprus emoji for the sea, the mountains and the island's animals

Most Cyprus emoji messages are about the sun and the sea: ☀️🏖️⛱️🌊 for the beaches of Ayia Napa, Protaras and Paphos. 🐚 and 🪨 belong to Petra tou Romiou near Paphos, the rock in the sea where, in Greek myth, Aphrodite was born from the foam. 🤿🚢 is the Zenobia, a ferry that sank off Larnaca in 1980 and is now one of the best-known wreck dives in the Mediterranean, and 🐢 the loggerhead and green turtles that nest on beaches such as Lara Bay.

Inland, ⛰️🌲 are the Troodos Mountains, pine forests and stone villages, where ❄️⛷️ you can ski on Mount Olympus in winter, the same day as a swim on the coast. 🌹 is the rose of the village of Agros, made into rose water.

🐏 is the mouflon, 🫏 the wild donkeys of the Karpas peninsula, and 🦩 the flamingos that winter on the Larnaca Salt Lake. 🐈 is everywhere: Cyprus is a famously cat-loving island, home to the monastery of Saint Nicholas of the Cats, where by legend cats were brought to fight the snakes 🐍 of the Akrotiri peninsula.

Holidays and the emoji Cypriots send

Easter is the biggest Greek Cypriot holiday. Eggs are dyed red 🥚🔴 and cracked against each other in a game, candles 🕯️ are lit at the midnight service, bonfires 🔥 and fireworks 🎆 follow, and Sunday is lamb 🐑 on the souvla. People send Χριστός Ανέστη! (Christ is risen) and Καλό Πάσχα! (Happy Easter). Fifty days later comes Kataklysmos 💦, the Festival of the Flood, celebrated by the sea with water fights.

Turkish Cypriots celebrate the two Bayrams, the Ramazan Bayramı at the end of Ramadan and the Kurban Bayramı, with 🌙 and İyi bayramlar!. Independence Day falls on 1 October 🇨🇾🎉, Christmas 🎄 is Καλά Χριστούγεννα!, and the Limassol Carnival 🎭 fills the streets before Lent.

In sport, ⚽ is the national passion, from APOEL, which reached the Champions League quarter-finals in 2012, to Omonia and Anorthosis; 🏀 basketball follows, 🎾 tennis has Marcos Baghdatis, finalist at the 2006 Australian Open, and 🏎️ is the Cyprus Rally. ✈️🚗 are for travel: Cyprus drives on the left, another legacy of British rule.