Jersey Emoji & Symbols

The Jersey flag emoji 🇯🇪 is not one picture in Unicode. It is two regional indicator letters, J and E (Jersey's ISO country code), which phones and apps draw together as the flag. Flags for every country and territory arrived as emoji in 2015. On a system without flag support, such as Windows' own emoji font, you see the letters JE instead; the text is the same, so it still shows as a flag on the reader's phone. Searching "jersey emoji" also turns up the shirt 👕 and New Jersey; US states have no flag emoji of their own, so 🇯🇪 always means the island.

The flag is white with a red diagonal cross, a saltire, and in its upper arm Jersey's badge: a red shield with three gold lions 🦁🛡️ under a gold crown 👑. The badge and crown were added in 1981; the plain red saltire is older. The lions are the same three that stand on England's royal arms. They come from the time when Jersey was part of the Duchy of Normandy: when King John lost mainland Normandy to France in 1204, the Channel Islands stayed with the English crown, and they still do. Jersey is a Crown Dependency, not part of the United Kingdom and not an overseas territory: it has its own parliament, the States Assembly 🏛️, its own laws and taxes, and at formal dinners islanders drink the loyal toast to "the King, our Duke". People paste the flag on its own or its colours as hearts ❤️🤍.

Jersey symbols: the Jersey cow, the Jersey Royal and island food

Ask islanders for the symbols of Jersey and after the flag they name the Jersey cow 🐄🐮, the small fawn breed with dark eyes whose milk 🥛 is unusually rich and golden. For more than two centuries, Jersey restricted cattle imports to protect its breed; in 2008, it allowed bull semen from other breeds, and cattle of other breeds are now found on the island. Jersey cows also graze on farms around the world. 🧈🍦🍨 are for Jersey butter, cream and ice cream, and 🫖 for a cream tea. There is no Jersey cow emoji; 🐄 is the one people use.

The other is the Jersey Royal 🥔, a small kidney-shaped new potato with protected status, dug in spring and early summer. Much of it is planted on côtils, steep south-facing slopes too steep for big machines 🚜🧑‍🌾, and traditionally fed with vraic 🌿, the seaweed farmers gather from the beaches. Islanders eat the first ones simply, boiled with butter 🧈.

Jersey was once covered in cider orchards 🍎🍏, and the apples still go into black butter (nièr beurre) 🫙, a dark spiced preserve of apples and cider cooked down through a whole night of stirring. Jersey wonders (mèrvelles) 🍩 are twisted doughnuts; the old saying is that you fry them as the tide goes out, or the fat will rise and spill over. Bean crock 🫘 is beans slow-baked with pork in an earthenware pot. From the sea come oysters 🦪 from the Royal Bay of Grouville, lobster 🦞, crab 🦀 and fish 🐟, and 🐚 stands for the ormer, a prized shellfish picked from the rocks at the lowest tides.

Jersey currency symbol: the Jersey pound £

Jersey's money is the pound sterling, written £. The States of Jersey issue their own banknotes 💷 and coins 🪙, with island scenes and landmarks, and they are worth exactly the same as Bank of England money; both kinds pass hand to hand on the island. Jersey still prints a £1 note, a note the Bank of England withdrew in 1988. Jersey notes are not legal tender in the United Kingdom, so shops in England may refuse them; banks there will change them. You will sometimes see the unofficial code JEP, but prices on the island are simply written £.

To type £: on a UK keyboard it is Shift+3, on Windows anywhere Alt+0163 on the number pad, on a US Mac keyboard Option+3, on a phone hold the $ key in the symbols row, and in HTML £.

Jèrriais and French: the accented letters è é à ô of Jersey

English is the island's language: CLDR estimates around 98,000 English speakers among about 103,000 people. But Jersey's own language is Jèrriais, a form of Norman, close to French yet a language of its own. It was the everyday speech of the countryside until the 20th century; today a few thousand people speak it, mostly older islanders, and it is taught in schools and seen on signs. Its accents are in its own name: Jèrriais, and the island is Jèrri. Hello is Bouônjour, see you soon À bétôt, and Merry Christmas Bouan Noué.

French was the language of Jersey's law and government for centuries and is still used in some ceremonies, and the place names are French or Norman: La Corbière, Mont Orgueil, La Hougue Bie and the reef of Les Écréhous. To type the letters: on Windows hold Alt and type 0232 for è, 0233 for é, 0224 for à, 0244 for ô (0200, 0201, 0192 and 0212 for È É À Ô); a UK keyboard gives é with AltGr+E. On a Mac, Option+E then E gives é, Option+` then E gives è, Option+I then O gives ô. On a phone, hold the letter E, A or O. In HTML: è, é, à, ô. The full sets are in the English and French letter collections.

Jersey's coast, castles and wildlife 🏰🌊

Jersey has some of the biggest tides in the world, around 12 metres at spring tides, and at low water the sea pulls back to uncover wide sands and miles of rock 🪨. Then you can walk out across St Aubin's Bay to Elizabeth Castle on its islet, or ride the amphibious castle ferry when the tide is in. Mont Orgueil 🏰, the medieval castle, towers over the harbour at Gorey ⛵⚓. On the south-west tip the white lighthouse of La Corbière stands on its rock at the end of a causeway that floods at high tide; there is no lighthouse emoji, so ⛯, the lighthouse map symbol, stands in for it, or 🌅 for the sunsets people watch there. The long west beach of St Ouen's Bay 🏖️🌊 is where islanders surf 🏄, and seals 🦭 and dolphins 🐬 live in the waters around the offshore reefs. Inland, La Hougue Bie is a Neolithic passage grave under a mound with a medieval chapel on top, and each of the twelve parishes has its old church ⛪.

🐸 is a Jersey joke: islanders are nicknamed crapauds, toads, because the story goes that toads live in Jersey but not in Guernsey, whose people are the ânes, donkeys. 🐿️ is for the red squirrels (Jersey has no grey ones), 🦎 for the green lizard of the dunes, and 🐦 for the puffins and other seabirds of the north coast cliffs. 🦤 is the dodo, the logo of Durrell Wildlife Park, which the naturalist Gerald Durrell founded in Jersey in 1959 to breed endangered animals 🦍🦧.

Jersey holidays, sports and the emoji people send

Liberation Day, 9 May, is the island's own national day 🕊️🇯🇪🇬🇧🎉. German forces occupied Jersey from 1 July 1940 until 9 May 1945; the Channel Islands were the only part of the British Isles occupied in the Second World War, and the day of liberation is marked every year in Liberation Square in St Helier. In August comes the Battle of Flowers 🌸💐🌼🌻, first held in 1902 for the coronation of Edward VII: parade floats covered in many thousands of flowers, which spectators once tore apart and threw at each other, hence the battle. The night-time Moonlight Parade 🌙 follows it. At Christmas 🎄 people who love the old language write Bouan Noué.

Football ⚽ means the Muratti, the match against Guernsey 🇬🇬 played for the Muratti Vase 🏆 since 1905, the islands' fiercest rivalry. 🏉 is for rugby, ⛳ for golf and Harry Vardon, born in Grouville in 1870, who won the Open Championship a record six times, and 🏊 for the swimmers who take on the round-island swim. People reach the island by plane ✈️ and ferry ⛴️ from England and from St Malo in France 🇫🇷, and get around by bus 🚌, bike 🚲 and on foot along the green lanes 🥾. 🏦💼 is the finance industry that employs much of the island, and 🧶🧥 is the knitting tradition that gave the world the word jersey. For the neighbours, see the Guernsey, Isle of Man, United Kingdom and France collections.