Symbols
91Click a symbol to copy it and open its page.
Flag & national symbols
🇬🇬 is the regional indicators G + G. The flag is the red St George's cross on white with a gold Norman cross laid over it (since 1985); the arms are three gold lions on red. The donkey is the islanders' own nickname and mascot, the Guernsey cow the island's famous dairy breed and the Guernsey lily its flower.
Guernsey pound
The Guernsey pound is on a par with sterling and written with the same £. The island prints its own notes, a £1 note among them, and mints its own coins; UK money is accepted alongside.
Letters in Guernsey names
English is the everyday language and needs no special letters. These come from Guernésiais (Dgèrnésiais in its own spelling), the island's Norman French, and from French place names, food and law: Câtel, Petit Bôt, La Forêt, gâche, the cry "À l'aide".
The Bailiwick and its neighbours
The Bailiwick of Guernsey includes Alderney, Sark and Herm. Sark has its own flag code, CQ; Alderney has a flag but no emoji. Jersey is the other bailiwick, the UK looks after defence and foreign affairs, and France is in sight on clear days.
Coast, cliffs & sea
St Peter Port & island landmarks
Guernsey food
Guernsey milk, butter and ice cream; gâche, the fruit loaf; bean jar; ormers, crab and lobster from the shore; tomatoes from the glasshouses; eggs, potatoes and flowers from the hedge veg stalls.
Island life & folklore
Holidays, books & sport
Liberation Day is 9 May. The Muratti is football between the islands, the Siam Cup rugby against Jersey.
🇬🇬 on the world map
Guernsey flag emoji 🇬🇬: a cross on a cross
The Guernsey flag emoji is not a single picture in Unicode. It is two regional indicator letters, G and G (Guernsey's ISO code), which phones and apps draw together as the flag. Regional-indicator flag emoji began in 2015, with Sark's added in 2024. On a system without flag artwork, such as Windows' own emoji font, you see the letters GG instead; the text is the same, so it still shows as a flag on the reader's phone.
The flag is the red cross of St George on white with a gold cross laid inside it. For a long time Guernsey flew the plain St George's cross, the same as England's flag , and the gold cross was added in 1985 to give the island a flag of its own and to mark its ties to Normandy. Its colours as hearts are . The island's arms are three gold lions on a red shield , the same lions as the royal arms of England, and belongs too: Guernsey is a Crown Dependency, governing itself under the King, whom islanders still toast as "the King, our Duke", the Duke of Normandy.
Guernsey symbols: the donkey, the cow and the Guernsey lily
The emoji every Guernsey person recognises is the donkey . Islanders have been nicknamed ânes, donkeys, for centuries, and they wear it with pride: there is a donkey statue in St Peter Port. The usual explanations are the steep streets of the town, where donkeys once carried the loads, and the islanders' famous stubbornness. Jersey people are crapauds, toads , because Jersey has toads and Guernsey has none, so vs is the whole inter-island rivalry in two characters.
The Guernsey cow is the island's best-known animal: a fawn-and-white dairy breed whose milk is a deep golden colour, rich in cream and beta carotene. are the milk, butter and ice cream made from it on the island. The national flower is the Guernsey lily, Nerine sarniensis, a pink flower with curling petals that sparkle in the sun; there is no nerine emoji, so stands in for it. Sarnia, the island's old Latin name, survives in the species name and in the island's anthem, "Sarnia Chérie".
Guernsey pound symbol and the accented letters of Guernsey French
The Guernsey pound is on a par with the pound sterling and is written with the same sign, . The States of Guernsey print their own banknotes , including a 1 note, gone from England since 1988, and mint their own coins . Bank of England notes are accepted everywhere on the island, but Guernsey notes are not legal tender in the UK, so it is best to spend or swap them before travelling. On a UK keyboard is Shift3; on Windows anywhere it is Alt0163, on a US Mac Option3, and in HTML £. is for St Peter Port's finance industry, a large part of the island's economy.
English is the language of daily life, so you need no special letters to write it. The accents come from Guernésiais, the island's own Norman French, which calls itself Dgèrnésiais; it is now spoken by a small and mostly elderly group of native speakers, with lessons and local efforts to keep it alive. French was long the language of the island's government and law, and it lives on in place names and food: the parish of Câtel (Castel), Petit Bôt Bay, La Forêt (Forest), St André, gâche. To type them: é is Alt0233 on Windows (AltGrE on a UK keyboard) and OptionE then E on a Mac; è is Alt0232 or Option then E; ê is Alt+0234 or Option+I then E; â Alt+0226, ô Alt+0244 and à Alt+0224, with Option+I or Option+ on a Mac. On a phone, hold the plain letter and pick the accented one. Capitals are É Alt0201, È Alt0200, Ê Alt0202, Â Alt0194, Ô Alt0212 and À Alt0192. For more English characters, see the English collection.
Guernsey emoji for the coast, St Peter Port and island life
Guernsey is a small island of cliffs, bays and lanes, so most posts are coast posts: for the west coast beaches at Cobo, Vazon and Rocquaine, for their famous sunsets, for the south coast cliff paths, for lighthouses like Les Hanois, for the dolphins seen offshore, for surfing at Vazon and for fishing off the rocks. fill St Peter Port's marinas, is the ferry and Aurigny, the island's own airline, named after the French name of Alderney. The tides are among the biggest in the world, so the same bay can be sand at noon and sea in the evening.
In St Peter Port, is Castle Cornet, which has guarded the harbour since the 13th century and still fires a noon-day gun daily during the season. is the Little Chapel at Les Vauxbelets, a tiny chapel that Brother Déodat, a member of a Catholic teaching order, began in 1914 and covered inside and out with seashells, pebbles and broken china. stands for La Gran'mère du Chimquière, a carved prehistoric standing stone at the gate of St Martin's churchyard, on whose head people still leave flowers or coins for luck. is Victor Hugo, who lived in exile on Guernsey from 1855 to 1870, made Hauteville House his home, finished Les Misérables there and set The Toilers of the Sea on the island, with its famous fight against an octopus. is for Renoir, who painted a series of views of Moulin Huet Bay in 1883, and for Guernsey Post, which has issued the island's own stamps since 1969.
Island life adds its own: for the Guernsey jumper, the tightly knitted navy fisherman's sweater the island gave its name to; for Guernsey's rich witch folklore, still visible in the "witches' seats", flat stones jutting from old farmhouse chimneys where passing witches could rest instead of coming down; and for Sark, in the same Bailiwick, where there are no cars, people get around by tractor, horse and carriage or bicycle, and the night sky is so dark that it was named the world's first dark sky island. is for Alderney, known for its blonde hedgehogs.
Guernsey food emoji: gâche, bean jar and hedge veg
Gâche , said "gosh", is Guernsey's fruit loaf, a rich bread with butter, sultanas and candied peel, eaten sliced and buttered with a cup of tea. Bean jar is the old Sunday dish: beans and pork or beef cooked slowly for hours in an earthenware jar, traditionally left overnight in the baker's oven. From the shore come crab , lobster , oysters and fish , and the island's prized ormers, a kind of abalone gathered from the rocks only on certain big tides early in the year; there is no abalone emoji, so people use .
is the Guernsey tomato: for much of the 20th century the island was covered in glasshouses growing tomatoes and flowers for the British market, and the empty glasshouses are still part of the landscape. are the hedge veg stalls, small roadside stands where islanders sell eggs, potatoes, vegetables and flowers from their gardens and buyers leave the money in an honesty box.
Liberation Day, the Muratti and the emoji people send
Guernsey's own holiday is Liberation Day, 9 May, the day in 1945 when British forces ended five years of German occupation. It is a public holiday with a parade, music and street parties, and people send . The occupation is also the setting of the novel The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society (2008, a film in 2018), whose title gives .
Sport between the islands is serious. The Muratti , the inter-insular football final, has been played since 1905, and the Siam Cup , Guernsey against Jersey at rugby, first contested in 1935, which makes it one of the oldest rugby trophies in the world. Guernsey also plays international cricket and sends a team to the Island Games . Match-day posts are or .
How to use them
6 situationsClick to copyGuernsey Emoji & Symbols combos
15Worth knowing
- The French word pieuvre, octopus, came into standard French from Guernsey's Norman dialect, through Victor Hugo's The Toilers of the Sea.
- In Australian football a team shirt is still called a guernsey, after the island's knitted fisherman's jumper, and to "get a guernsey" means to be picked for the team.
- Guernsey has no toads, which is why Jersey people are the crapauds and Guernsey people, for their part, the donkeys.
- The Clameur de Haro, a Norman legal remedy from the Middle Ages, is still valid in Guernsey: a person who feels wronged kneels and cries "Haro! Haro! Haro! À l'aide, mon Prince, on me fait tort", and the wrongdoing must stop until a court decides.
- The top speed limit anywhere on Guernsey is 35 mph, and many junctions are "filter in turn", painted yellow, where drivers simply take turns.
Questions people ask
8Is there a Guernsey flag emoji?
Yes: . It is made of the regional indicator letters G and G and shows as a flag on phones, Mac and most apps; on Windows it may appear as the letters GG.
How do I copy and paste the Guernsey flag emoji?
Tap or click in the grid above and it is copied; paste it with CtrlV, CmdV or a long-press on your phone. In a phone's emoji keyboard you can also search "Guernsey".
What does the Guernsey flag mean?
It is the red St George's cross on white, the flag Guernsey long shared with England, with a gold cross added inside it in 1985 to give the island a flag of its own and to mark its ties to Normandy. Its colours are .
Is Guernsey part of the UK?
No. Guernsey is a Crown Dependency: it governs itself under the British Crown, while the UK is responsible for its defence and foreign affairs. That is why it has its own flag and its own Guernsey pound.
What is the national animal of Guernsey?
Guernsey has no official national animal, but the donkey is the island's emblem, since islanders are nicknamed donkeys, and the Guernsey cow is its famous dairy breed.
What is the national flower of Guernsey?
The Guernsey lily, Nerine sarniensis, a pink flower with curled petals. There is no nerine emoji, so people use .
What is the Guernsey pound symbol?
The Guernsey pound uses the same sign as sterling, , and is worth exactly one pound sterling. Type it with Shift3 on a UK keyboard, Alt0163 on Windows, Option3 on a US Mac, or £ in HTML.
What language do they speak in Guernsey?
English. The island's traditional language is Guernésiais, or Guernsey French, a Norman language now spoken by few people, and French place names are everywhere, which is where letters like é, è, â and ô come in.
