Emotions emoji chart with names: which face is which feeling
Psychologists have argued for decades about how many basic emotions there are. Paul Ekman's classic list has six: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, surprise and disgust. Robert Plutchik's wheel adds trust and anticipation. Emoji cover all of them, and far more shades besides, which is why the chart above is arranged as a feelings wheel: pleasant rows first (happy, laughing, in love, excited, playful, calm), then the uncertain middle (thinking, neutral, surprised, embarrassed), then the hard ones (scared, sad, angry, disgusted or sick, tired).
The stars of each row are easy to name. Happy is Smiling Face with Smiling Eyes for warmth and Beaming Face for a big grin. Laughing is Face with Tears of Joy, the most used emoji in the world for years, and Rolling on the Floor Laughing. Love is Heart-Eyes and Smiling Face with Hearts. Surprise is Face with Open Mouth, Astonished Face and, when the surprise is too much, Exploding Head. Fear is Fearful Face, Anxious Face with Sweat and Face Screaming in Fear. Sadness runs from Slightly Frowning Face to Crying Face and Loudly Crying Face. Anger goes Angry Face, Enraged Face (the red one), Face with Symbols on Mouth. Disgust is Nauseated Face and Face Vomiting.
The quieter rows matter just as much in real chats. Thinking Face and Face with Raised Eyebrow are doubt; are the "no emotion" faces people ask about, a deadpan blank that means unimpressed or speechless; Flushed Face and Grimacing Face are embarrassment; Relieved Face is calm; and are tired and bored. If you need a deeper dive into one mood, the single-feeling collections go further: Happy & Laughing Emoji, Sad Emoji, Angry Emoji, Thinking Emoji, Surprised & Shocked Emoji, Sleep & Tired Emoji and the rest.
Emotion emoji meanings that are easy to get wrong
Several faces say something different from what their picture suggests. Slightly Smiling Face is officially a small smile, but in texting it often reads as polite, cold or passive-aggressive; is the safe happy face. Upside-Down Face is sarcasm or "this is fine" while everything burns. is named Face with Look of Triumph in Unicode, yet almost everyone uses it for huffing anger or stubborn determination. Sad but Relieved Face has a drop of sweat, not a tear. Sleepy Face has a manga snot bubble, so it means dozing off, not crying.
Two faces changed meaning with their users. Loudly Crying Face is still grief when the message is sad, but after a joke it means laughing until you cry, and Skull means "I'm dead", the same hysterical laughter one step further. Face Holding Back Tears is usually happy tears, pride or being touched rather than sadness, and Smiling Face with Tear is the bittersweet, brave-face emoji people search for as the mixed emotions emoji.
The pictures also vary between phones. In a 2016 University of Minnesota study, Grinning Face with Smiling Eyes was read as happy on Google phones and as negative on Apple ones, because Apple's version at the time looked more like a wince. If an emotion must land precisely with someone on a different device, say the word as well as sending the face.
Emotion symbols, hearts and body language
Not every emotion is a face. Japanese manga gave emoji a set of mood marks that still work on their own: Anger Symbol is the throbbing vein drawn on a furious character, Sweat Droplets is nervousness or effort, is sleep, Dizzy is seeing stars, Collision is the impact of a shock, Dashing Away is leaving in a hurry or a deflated sigh, and Fight Cloud, new in 2025, is the dust cloud of a brawl. Thought Balloon and Right Anger Bubble do the same for thinking and shouting. The old Wingdings-style symbols are literally named mood bubbles and lightning mood in Unicode.
Hearts carry the love row of the chart beyond faces. is plain love; and are love going both ways; are excitement, sparkle and a crush; is burning passion; is heartbreak and Mending Heart is healing afterwards; and are grief and quiet sympathy. The text hearts work in names and bios. Whole-body emoji act a feeling out: People Hugging for comfort, and for joy and praise, for gratitude or pleading, Shrugging for "no idea", Facepalming for "I can't believe it", Bowing for a deep apology, and for sulking, for nosy interest and for unbothered sass. The three monkeys are shy, not listening and "oops, I said too much".
Emotions emoji for kids and feelings charts
Teachers, therapists and parents use emoji faces as a feelings chart: a child who cannot yet say "frustrated" can point at or . The emoji keyboard is a ready-made chart, and the rows above map onto the usual classroom categories: happy, sad, angry, scared, surprised, disgusted, tired, calm. For a printable chart, copy each face you need from the symbol grid, pasting it into your document before copying the next; each face comes out at the size of the font you choose, and the names next to each row double as the labels.
Keep a chart for young children short. Six to eight faces is plenty: happy, sad, angry, scared, surprised, disgusted, tired and calm. Choose the plainer faces ( rather than , rather than ) so the drawing matches the word, and avoid the faces whose meaning depends on internet culture, such as , or .
Text smileys and emotion symbols that work without emoji
Before colour emoji there were typed faces. Scott Fahlman proposed :-) and :-( on a Carnegie Mellon message board in 1982. and are even older in computing: they were the first two printable characters of the 1981 IBM PC character set, and joined Unicode in 1993. and now also exist as emoji ( in the chart), while Black Smiling Face stays a plain text symbol.
Japanese kaomoji read the right way up and borrow letters from other alphabets for their features. ใ, ใ and ใท are katakana used as a whole smiling face. เฒฅ and เฒ are Kannada letters: เฒฅ_เฒฅ is crying and เฒ _เฒ is a disapproving stare. ะ is the Cyrillic letter De, used as a screaming mouth in (เฒฅะเฒฅ) and . makes big shiny eyes in โฟ, โฟ are smiling mouths, ๏ธต ๏ธฟ are frowns and ๏น is a wobbling, upset mouth. Copy the parts from the last group and assemble your own, or open the Kaomoji Symbols collection for hundreds of finished faces.
Symbols
182Click a symbol to copy it and open its page.
Emotion chart: every face by feeling
Read it like a feelings wheel: pleasant rows first, the hard ones further down. Each face sits with the emotion it shows most often.
Body language
Whole-person emoji that act a feeling out.
Hearts that carry a feeling
Colour hearts live in the Heart collection; these are the ones that say how love feels.
Emotion symbols from manga and comics
Marks drawn next to a character to show a mood: anger veins, sweat, sleep, a thought.
How to use them
6 situationsClick to copyEmotions Emoji combos
17Worth knowing
- Of Ekman's six basic emotions, disgust was the last to get its own emoji face: Nauseated Face arrived only in 2016 (Unicode 9.0), six years after the big batch of faces in Unicode 6.0.
- is officially named Face with Look of Triumph, but it is almost always sent as anger or stubborn determination; the Unicode name comes from the Japanese carrier emoji it was based on.
- เฒฅ and เฒ , the eyes of เฒฅ_เฒฅ and เฒ _เฒ , are letters of the Kannada alphabet used by some 45 million people in southern India; kaomoji borrowed them purely for their shape.
- In Unicode's 2021 count of emoji use, the top three were all emotions: , and , with also in the top five.
- The newest emotion faces are Shaking Face (2023), Face with Bags Under Eyes (2024) and Distorted Face with Fight Cloud (2025); the nodding and head-shaking faces came in 2023.
Questions people ask
8What are the emotions emoji with names?
The chart above lists every emotion face with its row name, and each face opens a page with its official name. The core set: Smiling Face with Smiling Eyes (happy), Face with Tears of Joy (laughing), Smiling Face with Heart-Eyes (love), Face with Open Mouth (surprised), Fearful Face (scared), Crying Face (sad), Angry Face (angry), Nauseated Face (disgusted), Sleeping Face (tired), Neutral Face (no emotion).
How do I copy and paste emotions emoji?
Tap any face in the chart to copy it, then paste it into your message, post or document. To build a feelings chart, paste each face into your document before copying the next one.
Which emoji is for each emotion?
Happy , laughing , love , excited , calm , thinking , surprised , embarrassed , scared , sad , crying , angry , disgusted , sick , tired , bored . Every row of the chart holds the alternatives.
What is the no emotion emoji?
Neutral Face, a straight mouth and open eyes. Expressionless Face is the same with closed eyes, and Face Without Mouth is speechless. All three mean deadpan, unimpressed or nothing to say.
Is there an emotions emoji chart for kids?
Yes, use the chart on this page: copy the faces you need one at a time from the symbol grid and paste each into a document to print. For young children keep to eight plain faces, , and write the feeling word under each.
What is the mixed emotions emoji?
Smiling Face with Tear is the usual one: happy and sad at once. Face Holding Back Tears is proud or touched, is a nervous laugh, Melting Face is embarrassed and overwhelmed, and is a sigh of relief or exhaustion.
What do the emotion symbols in anime and manga mean?
is the anger vein, nervous sweat, sleep, dizziness, a shock or impact, rushing off or a sigh, a brawl, a thought and a shout. They sit next to a face to show its mood, just as they do on the manga page.
How do I show emotions with text symbols?
Use one-character faces like ใ , or build a kaomoji from the parts: โฟ happy, เฒฅ_เฒฅ crying, เฒ _เฒ disapproving, (๏ธต) sad mouth, (เฒฅะเฒฅ) wailing. The classic typed faces :-) and :-( work everywhere too.
