The hat emoji and what each one means
There are only seven stand-alone hats in Unicode, and five of them came in the first big emoji release of 2010. Top Hat is the formal one: black tie, weddings, New Year's Eve, a magician pulling a rabbit out of it, and "hats off to you" when someone has done something well. Woman's Hat is a straw sun hat with a ribbon, so it stands for summer, gardens, beach holidays, Easter bonnets and wedding guests. Graduation Cap is the mortarboard; it marks a degree, a school year ending or an education entry in a bio, and the whole ceremony is covered in Graduation Emoji. Crown has grown far past headwear into "you're a queen" and "the best", which is why it has its own Crown Emoji page.
Billed Cap arrived in 2017 and is the one people ask about as "the blue hat emoji", because Apple, Google and Samsung all draw it blue. Its literal sense is a baseball cap, but in chat it almost always means cap, the slang word for a lie: a single under a claim says "that's cap", and "no cap " means "I'm not lying". Rescue Worker's Helmet is the white helmet with a red cross used for first aid, emergency crews and safety at work; it is the character people reach for when they want a hard hat. Military Helmet, added in 2020, is the plain army helmet for soldiers, Veterans Day and Memorial Day posts, with more of the same in Military & Army Emoji.
Cowboy emoji meaning, from yeehaw to the sad cowboy
Cowboy Hat Face is the only smiley wearing a hat you can see, a grin under a wide-brimmed brown hat, and it has been in Unicode since 2016. Literally it says howdy, rodeo, Texas, country music and the Wild West: is a cowboy and a country night. In Gen Z chat it is mostly ironic. It plays the cheerful, slightly clueless partner reacting to chaos ("well howdy "), it fronts the "yeehaw" aesthetic, and it is the base of the sad cowboy meme: a drawn-over version of this face with watery eyes, used when you are smiling through pain. From a guy it is usually just playful, a goofy "howdy" rather than a signal.
Unicode files two more faces in its hat subgroup. Partying Face wears a party hat and blows a horn; it is the birthday hat emoji people search for, and Birthday Emoji has every combo for it. Disguised Face is in the same subgroup although it wears no hat at all, only Groucho glasses, a false nose and a moustache; it means undercover or incognito.
People in hats: uniforms, traditions, crowns and Santa hats
Most hats in emoji sit on people. The uniform caps and helmets are Police Officer in a peaked cap, Pilot in an airline cap, Guard in the tall bearskin of the Queen's Guard in London, Construction Worker in a yellow hard hat, Factory Worker in a hard hat with safety glasses, Firefighter in a fire helmet and Astronaut in a space helmet. The trade hats are Cook in a tall white toque, the closest thing to a chef hat emoji, Farmer in a straw hat, Artist in a beret and Student in a mortarboard. Detective wears a fedora or deerstalker, Ninja a black hood, and Person in Suit Levitating a pork pie hat.
Four characters show head coverings worn every day by real communities. Person Wearing Turban shows a dastaar, the turban worn by Sikh men and also by many people in South Asia, the Middle East and North Africa; Person with Skullcap wears a gua pi mao, the round Chinese cap of the Qing dynasty; Woman with Headscarf is the hijab emoji, added in 2017 after a proposal by Rayouf Alhumedhi, a 15-year-old student in Berlin; Person with Veil is the bride, kept company by the rest of Wedding Emoji. Use the Sikh and Muslim ones for the people who wear them, Vaisakhi greetings or Ramadan & Eid wishes, not as a shorthand for a country.
The crowns belong to Prince, Princess in a tiara and Person with Crown, the gender-neutral monarch from 2021. The red Santa hat is only available on a head: Santa Claus, Mrs. Claus and Mx Claus, which is why "santa hat emoji" searches end at Christmas Emoji. Mage wears the pointed wizard hat, the nearest thing to a witch hat emoji, and on Apple and Google both snowmen, and , wear a black top hat. Sports add a row of helmets and caps: the jockey, cyclists, skier and snowboarder, the climber, the fencing mask, swim and water polo caps and the golfer's cap.
Hat emoji that don't exist, and what to send instead
The searches tell the story: people want a santa hat emoji, a chef hat emoji, a party hat, a beanie, a bucket hat, a witch hat, a sombrero and a hard hat, and none of them exists as a separate character. The working substitutes are or for a Santa hat, for a chef's hat, for a party hat, for a beanie or any casual cap, for a bucket hat or straw hat, for a witch hat, for a sombrero and or for a hard hat. Hats without a face are hard to add because Unicode judges new emoji by how distinct and widely used they would be, and a hat on an existing head usually covers the need.
If you want a hat in plain text, the kaomoji trick works: put a hat emoji on top of a face, ( ͜ʖ ) or , or write the hat into the face with symbols, ( ・ω・) for a cap. For a hat you can send to anyone, including users on old phones, are the safest: they have been in every emoji font since 2010 and look the same everywhere.
The hat symbol in math: how to type x̂
The other thing people call a hat is the little roof on x̂, ŷ and p̂. Its proper name is the circumflex, and in mathematics "x hat" marks a unit vector, in statistics ŷ "y hat" is a predicted value and p̂ "p hat" an estimate of a proportion, and in signal processing a hat marks a Fourier transform. In LaTeX it is \hat{x}, or \widehat{xy} for a hat over several letters; in Microsoft Word open Insert, Equation, Accent and pick the hat.
In plain text there are three characters to copy from the last group of the grid. Circumflex Accent is the caret on your keyboard (Shift 6), which doubles as the power sign in 210 and as the Control key in old shortcut notation. ˆ Modifier Letter Circumflex Accent is a spacing hat that sits on its own. ̂ Combining Circumflex Accent is the one that actually lands on a letter: type the letter, then paste the combining mark right after it, and x becomes x̂, v becomes v̂. is the fullwidth version used in Japanese text and in kaomoji.
Symbols
51Click a symbol to copy it and open its page.
The hats themselves
The only hats you can send without a head under them.
Uniforms and work hats
How to use them
6 situationsClick to copyHat Emoji combos
15Worth knowing
- Unicode never renames a character, only the keyboard names change: is still officially MAN WITH GUA PI MAO and MAN WITH TURBAN, while your phone calls them Person with Skullcap and Person Wearing Turban.
- is older than most emoji. It entered Unicode in 2009 as HELMET WITH WHITE CROSS, borrowed from a set of Japanese television broadcasting symbols, a year before the main emoji set arrived.
- Woman with Headscarf exists because Rayouf Alhumedhi, a 15-year-old Saudi student living in Berlin, wrote the proposal in 2016 when she found no emoji that looked like her. It shipped in 2017.
- Person in Suit Levitating comes from Microsoft's Webdings font and copies the rude boy in a pork pie hat from the logo of the 2 Tone record label; Unicode took the whole font's figures in as emoji in 2014.
- Unicode's own subgroup for hats, called face-hat, holds exactly three faces, , and the third one is wearing glasses, not a hat.
Questions people ask
8Is there a hat emoji?
Yes, seven hats on their own: Top Hat, Billed Cap, Woman's Hat, Graduation Cap, Crown, Rescue Worker's Helmet and Military Helmet. Many more hats sit on people, such as .
What does the cap emoji mean?
means "cap", slang for a lie. Sent on its own it says "that's cap" (you're lying); in "no cap " it means "no lie, for real". Literally it is a baseball cap, blue on most phones.
What does the cowboy emoji mean?
literally means cowboy, howdy, rodeo and country. In chat it is mostly ironic: a cheerful face reacting to chaos, the "yeehaw" aesthetic, or the sad cowboy meme of smiling through pain. From a guy it is usually just playful.
Is there a santa hat emoji?
No. The Santa hat only appears on Santa Claus, Mrs. Claus and Mx Claus. For a hat alone, people use or next to their name.
Is there a chef hat emoji?
Not on its own. Cook wears the tall white chef's hat; and fill out a cooking post.
How do I copy and paste hat emoji?
Tap or click any hat in the grid above to copy it, then paste with CtrlV or a long press. On an iPhone or Android keyboard, search "hat", "cap" or "helmet" in the emoji search field.
What is the hat symbol in math called?
The circumflex. x̂ is read "x hat" and marks a unit vector, ŷ a predicted value, p̂ an estimated proportion. Type it in LaTeX as \hat{x}, or paste the combining mark ̂ right after a letter.
What does the hat emoji mean from a guy or a girl?
It depends on the hat: is a playful howdy, means "hats off" or something classy, says they think you are lying, is summer or a holiday mood, means they think you are a queen or a king.
