Palau Emoji & Symbols

The Palau flag emoji 🇵🇼 is not a single picture in Unicode. It is two regional indicator letters, P and W (Palau's ISO country code), which phones and apps draw together as the flag. Most country flags, this one among them, became emoji in 2015. On a system without flag support, such as Windows' own emoji font, you see the letters PW instead; the text is the same, so it still shows as a flag on the reader's phone.

The flag was adopted on 1 January 1981, the day Palau's constitution took effect. It is a golden-yellow disc on a light blue field, and the disc sits slightly toward the pole rather than in the middle. The disc is the full moon 🌕: in Palauan tradition the full moon is the best time for fishing, planting, harvesting and celebrating, and it also stands for peace and unity. The blue is the Pacific Ocean around the islands and the passing from foreign rule to self-government. People paste the flag as 🌕🩵 or 🩵💛 when they want it in colours or hearts.

Palau symbols: Rock Islands, Jellyfish Lake and the reefs

Palau is a chain of islands in the western Pacific 🌏, east of the Philippines and north of New Guinea. Most people live in Koror, the largest town, while the capital, Ngerulmud, with its domed Capitol 🏛️, stands on Babeldaob, the second-largest island in Micronesia after Guam. To the south lie the Rock Islands (Chelbacheb): hundreds of small limestone islands covered in forest, worn away at the waterline so that many look like green mushrooms floating on a turquoise lagoon. Their Southern Lagoon became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2012, and 🏝️🌴🌊 and 🛶 (for the kayak trips between them) are the emoji for it. 🌌 is the Milky Way, a lagoon whose white limestone mud visitors smear on their skin.

Jellyfish Lake (Ongeim'l Tketau) on the island of Eil Malk is a marine lake where millions of golden jellyfish 🪼 rise and fall with the sun; their sting is very mild and unlikely to be felt by people, so swimmers 🏊 snorkel among them. Scuba gear is not allowed there. The jellyfish nearly vanished after a drought in the mid-2010s and the lake was closed until they recovered. Out on the reef, dive sites such as Blue Corner and German Channel, a passage dug through the reef in the German era, are known for grey reef sharks 🦈, manta rays, turtles 🐢 and clouds of reef fish 🐠, and the lagoon hides Japanese ships 🚢 sunk in the Second World War. 🦪 stands in for the giant clams Palau farms and protects.

Sharks, the Palau Pledge and reef-safe sunscreen

Palau is known for protecting its ocean. In 2009 it declared the world's first shark sanctuary, banning commercial shark fishing in all its waters, so 🦈 is something of a national emblem. In 2015 it went further and set aside most of its waters as the Palau National Marine Sanctuary, closed to commercial fishing.

Since December 2017 every visitor signs the Palau Pledge 🛂✍️, stamped into their passport on arrival: a promise, addressed to the children of Palau 🧒, to tread lightly, act kindly and explore mindfully. Palau also became the first country to ban sunscreen 🧴 with ingredients harmful to coral 🪸, from 1 January 2020. Travellers who post 🦈🪸🧴🚫 or 🛂✍️🇵🇼 are usually talking about one of these.

Bai, storyboards, stone money and Palauan food

The most Palauan building is the bai, the traditional meeting house of a village's chiefs, raised on stones, with a steep, high gabled roof and beams and gables painted with legends and history. Unicode has no bai, so 🛖 stands in, and the Palau bai symbols people search for are those painted figures. The same stories are carved into storyboards 🪵, flat wooden panels that have become Palau's best-known craft. Society is organised in clans 👪 traced through the mother's line, and senior women hold real power over titles, land and money. Palauan money, udoud, is old glass and ceramic beads, still exchanged at births, marriages and funerals. 🪨 recalls a different kind of money: the huge stone discs of Yap were quarried in Palau and carried hundreds of kilometres home by canoe and raft.

Taro, grown by women in wet taro patches, is the heart of Palauan food; there is no taro emoji, so 🍠 stands in. Fish 🐟, mangrove and coconut crab 🦀, coconut 🥥, banana 🍌 and tropical fruit 🥭 fill the rest of the table. Three decades of Japanese rule left rice 🍚, sashimi and sushi 🍣 and bento boxes 🍱 as everyday food, and many Japanese words in the Palauan language.

Baseball, history and Palau Independence Day

Palau was ruled by Spain, sold to Germany in 1899, and taken by Japan in 1914; Koror became the capital of Japan's South Seas Mandate. Baseball ⚾ arrived in the Japanese era and is still the most popular sport, ahead of basketball 🏀, and Palau's teams compete at the Micronesian Games 🏅. In 1944 the island of Peleliu saw one of the fiercest battles of the Pacific war 🪖, and its wrecks and memorials draw visitors today. After the war Palau was part of the US-run Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands, and its constitution took effect in 1981.

Palau Independence Day is 1 October: on that date in 1994 the Compact of Free Association with the United States 🇺🇸 took effect and Palau became a sovereign country, joining the United Nations later that year. It is celebrated with parades, traditional dances 💃, canoe races 🛶, food and fireworks 🎆, so 🇵🇼🎉 and 🇵🇼🎆 fill feeds that week. Constitution Day on 9 July marks the 1980 vote that ratified the constitution.

Palauan words, Belau and the US dollar $

Palau's national language is Palauan, and Palauan and English are both official; in the southwest, Sonsorolese and Tobian are official in their own states, and Angaur's state constitution lists Japanese too. CLDR estimates put Palau's population at around 22,000 people. Palauan is written with plain Latin letters and no accents, so there are no special characters to copy: what looks unusual is spelling. ch is a glottal stop, as in Chelbacheb and Ngerchelong, and many names start with ng, as in Ngerulmud and Ngardmau. The country calls itself Belau.

The greetings people type are easy: Alii! is hello, Ungil tutau good morning, and Sulang or the more formal Mesulang thank you. Palau has no currency of its own and uses the US dollar, written $ and ¢, with 💵 and 🪙 as emoji. For the neighbours, see our Micronesia 🇫🇲, Guam 🇬🇺, Philippines 🇵🇭, Japan 🇯🇵 and United States 🇺🇸 collections, and the English collection for the letters of Palau's other official language.