St. Barthélemy Emoji & Flag

🇧🇱 is the flag emoji of Saint-Barthélemy, the small French island in the north-eastern Caribbean that English speakers call St Barts or St Barths and islanders simply Saint-Barth. Like every country flag emoji it is two regional indicator letters, 🇧 and 🇱, which phones and Macs draw as a flag. The code BL dates from 2007, when Saint-Barthélemy stopped being part of Guadeloupe 🇬🇵 and became an overseas collectivity of France in its own right, together with its neighbour Saint-Martin 🇲🇫.

Officially the island has no flag of its own: the flag flown on public buildings is the French tricolour 🇫🇷. What islanders and visitors know as the St Barts flag is a white banner carrying the island's coat of arms; the 🇧🇱 emoji is a flag sequence and may appear as the letters BL on some platforms. On Windows it usually appears as the two letters BL, because Windows' emoji font has no country flag pictures; that is the "st barthelemy flag emoji text" people ask about. Pasted into a phone or a Mac, the same 🇧🇱 shows as a flag again.

Saint Barthélemy flag meaning: ⚜️ ✠ 👑 and Ouanalao

The coat of arms tells the island's history in three bands. At the top, three gold fleurs-de-lis ⚜️ on blue stand for France, which settled the island in the 17th century. In the middle, a white cross ✠ on red recalls the Knights of Malta, the Order of St John, who owned Saint-Barthélemy from 1651 to 1665. At the bottom, three gold crowns 👑 on blue are the Three Crowns of Sweden 🇸🇪, which ruled the island from 1784 to 1878. Two pelicans hold the shield.

The word on the scroll, and the answer to "what language is on the St Barts flag", is Ouanalao, the island's name in the language of the Amerindian people who lived in the Lesser Antilles before Europeans arrived. It is not French at all, which is why visitors often ask about it.

St Barts emoji for beaches, yachts and the famous landing

Most St Barts emoji come from the coast. 🏝️ 🌴 🏖️ ☀️ 🌊 are the island itself and its beaches, Saint-Jean, Flamands, Shell Beach in Gustavia, and the wilder Saline and Gouverneur; ⛱️ 👙 🩴 🕶️ 🧴 🌅 are a day on the sand ending at sunset. Under water, 🤿 🐢 🐠 🪸 🐚 🦀 are snorkelling in the island's marine nature reserve, and 🏄 🪁 the surfing and kitesurfing on the windward side, above all in the lagoon at Grand Cul-de-Sac. In winter 🐳 humpback whales pass offshore.

🛩️ 🛬 📸 belong to the airport at Saint-Jean, one of the most talked-about landings in the world: small planes come over a hill crowded with onlookers, drop steeply onto a runway of only about 650 metres and stop just short of the beach. Larger jets cannot land, so most visitors change planes on Saint-Martin 🇲🇫🇸🇽 next door, about 15 minutes away by air, or take the ferry ⛴️.

🛥️ ⚓ are Gustavia harbour, lined with yachts, and ⛵ 🏆 its regattas, the St Barths Bucket for big sailing yachts in March and Les Voiles de Saint-Barth in April. 🛳️ is the cruise ships that anchor off Gustavia. On land, 🦎 is the iguanas that sun themselves everywhere, 🌵 the round Turk's cap cactus of the dry hills, known locally as tête à l'anglais, 🌺 🥥 🥭 the gardens, and 🥾 the walk to Colombier beach, reached only on foot or by boat. 🌀 is hurricane season, remembered above all for Hurricane Irma in September 2017.

Food, rosé, straw hats and celebrations

For food, 🦞 🐟 🎣 are the spiny lobster and the fish landed by local fishermen, 🍲 🌶️ Creole cooking with its accras, colombo and hot pepper sauce, and 🥖 🥐 🧀 the very French bakeries and cheese counters. 🍷 🥂 🍾 are the rosé and champagne of the beach restaurants, and 🍹 a rum punch at sunset.

👒 🧺 belong to Corossol, the fishing village where women have long woven hats, baskets and bags from the leaves of the latanier palm, a craft still sold on the island. ⛪ is the churches of Gustavia and Lorient, 🛍️ 💎 👜 the boutiques of Gustavia and Saint-Jean.

Carnival before Lent is sent as 🎭 🪶 💃 🕺 🥁 🎶; on Ash Wednesday, as across the French Antilles, Vaval, the carnival king, is burned 🔥. 🎆 🎇 🎉 are New Year's Eve, when fireworks go up over a harbour full of yachts. Other days people mark with 🇧🇱 are 14 July with 🇫🇷, 24 August, the feast of the island's patron Saint Bartholomew, and 9 October, which commemorates the abolition of slavery on the island in 1847, under Swedish rule.

St Barts currency: the euro €

The currency of Saint-Barthélemy is the euro, written €, and prices are given in euros, although US dollars are accepted in many shops and restaurants. The island has used the euro since France did, and kept it after 1 January 2012, when Saint-Barthélemy left the European Union and became an associated overseas country and territory instead, which is why the EU flag is not part of this page.

To type € on Windows hold Alt and type 0128 on the number pad; on a Mac with a US keyboard press Option + Shift + 2; on a French AZERTY keyboard it is AltGr + E. In HTML it is €. French writes the sign after the amount with a space, 25 €, where English writes €25.

French letters for St. Barthélemy

French is the official language. INSEE counted 10,660 residents in 2023. English is widely understood, and older islanders still speak a patois that goes back to the French of the first settlers. The island's own name needs a French letter: the é of Barthélemy, an acute accent that marks a closed "ay" sound. The full set is here: À Â Ç È É Ê Ë Î Ï Ô Ù Û Ü Ÿ, the ligatures Œ Æ, their small forms, and the French quotation marks « ». Gustavia remembers Sweden in its name and on its street signs, which give many street names in both French and Swedish.

On Windows, é is Alt + 0233, è Alt + 0232, à Alt + 0224, ç Alt + 0231, capital É Alt + 0201, and « » are Alt + 0171 and Alt + 0187. On a Mac, press Option + E then the letter for é, Option + ` then the letter for è or à, Option + I for ê, Option + U for ë, Option + C for ç, and Option + \ for «. On a phone, hold down e, a, c or u to pick the accented form. The whole alphabet with every rule is on French Letters & Accents; France has its own page, as do the island's neighbours St. Martin and Sint Maarten and its former parent Guadeloupe.