Guatemala Emoji & Symbols

The Guatemala flag emoji 🇬🇹 is not one character but two regional indicator letters, 🇬 and 🇹, for the country code GT; phones and apps that know the pair draw the flag. Windows is the usual exception: its own emoji font has no country flags, so on a Windows PC 🇬🇹 can show up as the letters GT. Nothing is lost, and the same text shows the flag on a phone or a Mac.

The flag, adopted in 1871, has three vertical stripes: sky blue, white and sky blue. The blue is usually read as the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea on either side of the country, and as the sky; the white as peace and purity. In the middle sits the coat of arms: a resplendent quetzal perched on a scroll that reads Libertad 15 de Septiembre de 1821, the day of independence from Spain, in front of two crossed rifles and two crossed swords inside a laurel wreath, 🦜📜⚔️🌿. The plain civil flag leaves the arms out; most emoji designs draw a tiny version of them.

El Salvador 🇸🇻, Honduras 🇭🇳 and Nicaragua 🇳🇮 keep the blue-white-blue of the old Federal Republic of Central America, which Guatemala also belonged to, in horizontal stripes; Guatemala's run upright. Argentina 🇦🇷 is the other flag people mix it up with: light blue and white too, but across, with a sun in the middle.

Since 2022 there is a light blue heart 🩵, so a Guatemala flag heart is either 🇬🇹❤️ or the stripes in hearts, 🩵🤍🩵. For bios and usernames where flags do not show, 🟦⬜🟦 does the same job.

Guatemala symbols and meanings: the quetzal, the ceiba and the marimba

The resplendent quetzal, the national bird, is emerald green with a red breast, and the male trails tail feathers longer than its whole body. It lives in the cloud forests of the Verapaces and other highlands, and the ancient Maya prized its feathers for the headdresses of rulers 🪶. Guatemalans say it cannot live in a cage, which is why it stands for liberty on the coat of arms. There is no quetzal emoji: people use the green parrot 🦜, the plain bird 🐦 or a feather 🪶.

The other national symbols are the monja blanca or white nun orchid, the national flower, which has no emoji of its own; the ceiba 🌳, the national tree, whose roots, trunk and crown join the underworld, the earth and the sky in Maya belief; and the marimba 🎶, the wooden keyboard played by several musicians at once, which is officially the national instrument and also has no emoji.

The currency is the quetzal too, named after the bird in 1925. It has no special Unicode sign: the symbol is a plain capital Q written before the amount, as in Q100 or Q1.50, and one quetzal is 100 centavos. The ISO code is GTQ. Guatemalans call themselves chapines, so things that are typically Guatemalan are chapín, and 🇬🇹 with ¡Puro chapín! is the proudest sign-off there is.

Guatemala letters and numbers: Spanish ñ and ¿, Mayan ʼ and ä, Maya numerals

Spanish is the language of about 16 million of Guatemala's roughly 18 million people (CLDR estimates). It needs á é í ó ú, ü as in pingüino, ñ as in piñata, and the opening marks ¿ and ¡ at the start of every question and exclamation: ¿Qué onda? ¡Qué chilero! Among friends Guatemalans use vos with its own stressed verb forms, vos sabés, vos tenés, so the accents show up all the time. On Windows hold Alt and type 0241 for ñ, 0209 for Ñ, 0225 á, 0233 é, 0237 í, 0243 ó, 0250 ú, 0252 ü, 0191 ¿ and 0161 ¡. On a Mac press Option+N then N for ñ, Option+E then a vowel for the acute, Option+U then u for ü, Option+1 for ¡ and Option+Shift+? for ¿. On a phone, hold the letter down.

Guatemala officially recognises 22 Mayan languages besides Xinka and Garifuna. The largest, Qʼeqchiʼ, Kaqchikel and Kʼicheʼ, have about 1.6 million speakers each and Mam about 840,000 (CLDR estimates). They are written in a unified Latin alphabet made official in 1987, and its most visible mark is the apostrophe in names like Kʼicheʼ and Qʼeqchiʼ: it marks a glottalised consonant, so kʼ, qʼ, tʼ, tzʼ and chʼ are letters of their own, and bʼ is the language's b sound. The careful character is ʼ, the modifier letter apostrophe U+02BC (ʼ), which software treats as part of the word; most people simply type the keyboard apostrophe ', which is why you see both Kʼicheʼ and K'iche'. Kaqchikel writes its relaxed vowels with two dots, ä ë ï ö ü, and Kʼicheʼ uses ä the same way; on Windows they are Alt+0228, 0235, 0239, 0246 and 0252, on a Mac Option+U then the vowel. The collections for Kʼicheʼ, Kaqchikel, Qʼeqchiʼ, Mam, Qʼanjobʼal, Poqomchiʼ and Achi have each language's own letters, and the Spanish collection has the full Spanish set.

The Maya wrote numbers with dots and bars in base 20: a dot 𝋡 is one, a bar 𝋥 is five, and a shell 𝋠 is zero, so nineteen is three bars and four dots, 𝋳. Bigger numbers stack these digits in levels of twenty, which plain text cannot do. Unicode added the twenty digits 𝋠 to 𝋳 (U+1D2E0 to U+1D2F3) in 2018; they show only where a font with the Mayan Numerals block is installed, so on many phones they still appear as boxes.

Guatemala emoji for Tikal, the volcanoes and Lake Atitlán

Tikal, deep in the Petén rainforest and a UNESCO World Heritage site since 1979, is the great Maya city; its Temple I is called the Temple of the Great Jaguar 🐆, howler monkeys 🐒 roar from the trees at dawn, and crocodiles 🐊 live in the lakes of Petén. There is no Maya pyramid emoji, so 🐆🐒🌳 usually stands for a day at Tikal. The feathered serpent, Qʼuqʼumatz in Kʼicheʼ, is 🐍🪶, and the Popol Vuh 📖, the Kʼicheʼ book of creation, tells how the gods made the first people from maize 🌽 after failing with mud and with wood. The 260-day Maya calendar 📅 is still kept by daykeepers, ajqʼij, who lead ceremonies with fire, candles and incense 🔥🕯️.

Maya women in much of the highlands wear traje: a woven blouse, the huipil 👚, and a wrapped skirt, the corte, many of them made on a backstrap loom 🧵🧶, with colours and patterns 🎨 that tell which town they come from. The Thursday and Sunday market of Chichicastenango 🧺 is the most famous place to see them sold, beside the steps of the church of Santo Tomás, where copal incense burns.

Guatemala has more than thirty volcanoes 🌋. Fuego erupts almost constantly, and hikers climb neighbouring Acatenango overnight to watch it; on Pacaya people roast marshmallows over warm rock; Tajumulco, at 4,220 metres, is the highest peak in Central America ⛰️. Lake Atitlán 🏞️ lies under three volcanoes, with Maya towns around its shore linked by lanchas 🚤 and fishermen's dugout canoes 🛶. Antigua Guatemala ⛪, the old capital until the earthquakes of 1773, is a UNESCO site of cobbled streets and ruined baroque churches. 💧 is Semuc Champey, a staircase of turquoise pools over the Cahabón River; 🌴 is Livingston on the Caribbean, home of the Garifuna; 🌊🐢 are the black-sand Pacific beaches of Monterrico, where sea turtles nest. Between towns people ride camionetas 🚌, old American school buses painted in bright colours, which visitors call chicken buses.

Guatemalan food emoji: tamales, pepián and the desayuno chapín

The desayuno chapín is eggs 🍳, refried black beans 🫘, fried plantains 🍌, fresh cheese and cream 🧀, corn tortillas 🫓 and often avocado 🥑, with a cup of Guatemalan coffee ☕ from Antigua, Huehuetenango or Atitlán.

Corn 🌽 is at every meal. Tamales 🫔 come in many kinds: the tamal colorado in a red sauce, wrapped in banana leaf, is the Saturday-night and Christmas one, and chuchitos are small firm tamales in a corn husk. Atol de elote 🥣 is a hot, sweet drink of fresh corn. Pepián 🍲🍗🌶️, a thick stew of roasted seeds, chiles and tomato with chicken, is often called the national dish, and kakʼik 🦃 is the red, spicy turkey soup of the Qʼeqchiʼ of Alta Verapaz. Rellenitos are plantain dumplings filled with sweetened black beans and chocolate 🍌🫘🍫.

In the street there are shucos 🌭, Guatemalan hot dogs on toasted bread with guacamole, cabbage and sauces, and green mango 🥭 with lime, salt and ground pumpkin seed. On the Caribbean coast the Garifuna dish tapado is a coconut soup of shrimp and fish 🥥🦐🐟. The Maya drank frothy cacao 🍫 long before Europe knew chocolate. Gallo beer 🍺 has a rooster 🐓 on the label, Zacapa rum 🥃 takes its name from a town in the east, and the fried chicken 🍗 of Pollo Campero, founded in Guatemala in 1971, travels in boxes on flights to relatives abroad.

Guatemala holidays and football emoji

On the night of 14 September young runners carry torches 🔥🏃 in relays from the capital to their own towns, and on 15 September, Independence Day, school marching bands with drums 🥁 and trumpets 🎺 parade through every town.

Semana Santa, Holy Week, is biggest in Antigua: families make alfombras, carpets of dyed sawdust, flowers and fruit 🌺🎨, on the cobbles, and processions carried by cucuruchos in purple robes 💜✝️🙏 walk over them. UNESCO listed Holy Week in Guatemala as intangible heritage in 2022.

On 1 November, Día de Todos los Santos, families visit the cemetery 🪦💐 and eat fiambre 🥗, a cold salad of dozens of meats, sausages, vegetables and cheeses. In Sumpango and Santiago Sacatepéquez giant round kites 🪁 of tissue paper and bamboo, many metres across, are raised and flown, said to carry messages to the dead. On 7 December at six in the evening comes the Quema del Diablo 😈🔥, when people burn devil figures and rubbish in front of their houses to clean out the old year's evil before the feast of the Immaculate Conception. At midnight on Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve the whole country sets off firecrackers and fireworks 🧨🎆, with tamales and hot fruit punch.

Football ⚽ is the national passion: the clásico chapín between Municipal, the reds, and Comunicaciones, the cremas, splits families, and the national team plays in blue and white.