Suriname Emoji & Symbols

The Suriname flag emoji 🇸🇷 shows five horizontal stripes, green, white, a wide red band, white and green, with a yellow five-pointed star in the middle. The flag was raised on independence day, 25 November 1975. The usual reading of the colours: green for the fertile land and hope, white for justice and freedom, red for progress and love, and the yellow star ⭐ for the unity of all the country's peoples and a golden future.

Like every country flag, 🇸🇷 is not a picture in Unicode but two regional indicator letters, 🇸 + 🇷, the country code SR. Supported platforms draw the pair as a flag; Windows and other unsupported platforms may show the letters SR instead. Hearts in its colours, 💚🤍❤️💛, are an easy way to echo the flag, and ★ works when a name field only accepts text.

People who search for the old Suriname flag mean the flag used from 1959 to 1975: white, with five coloured stars joined by a black ellipse, standing for the country's main population groups. There is no emoji for it.

Suriname national symbols: faja lobi, kankantrie and the coat of arms

The national flower is the faja lobi (Ixora coccinea), a cluster of small fiery red flowers whose Sranan name means "fiery love". There is no emoji for it, so people use 🌺 hibiscus as the nearest red tropical flower. The kankantrie, the giant kapok or ceiba tree of the forest, is honoured as a sacred tree in Afro-Surinamese tradition; 🌳 stands in for it.

The coat of arms shows two Indigenous men holding a shield with a sailing ship and a royal palm, under the motto Justitia, Pietas, Fides (justice, piety, loyalty). It has no emoji, but 🌴 and ⛵ are the pieces people borrow when they want it.

Surinamese dollar symbol $ and how to write prices

Suriname's currency is the Surinamese dollar (code SRD). It replaced the Surinamese guilder in 2004 at 1,000 guilders to one dollar. Its sign is the ordinary dollar sign $, so prices are usually written SRD 50 or Sr$ 50 to keep them apart from US dollars. 💵 is the emoji people send for cash.

The old guilder was written with the florin sign ƒ (Sf), the same hooked f the Netherlands used before the euro and Aruba still uses. Gold mining ⛏️🪙 and oil 🛢️ are the money stories behind many Surinamese headlines, which is why those emoji turn up in news posts.

Dutch and Sranan Tongo: the letters you need for Suriname

Dutch is the official language and the language of school, law and newspapers; CLDR estimates put around 580,000 people in Suriname as Dutch speakers, out of a population of roughly 650,000. Suriname is the only country in South America where Dutch is official. Dutch uses few accents: the acute marks stress or emphasis, as in één (one) versus een (a), and the diaeresis (trema) shows that a vowel starts a new syllable, as in ideeën, geïnteresseerd and België. The list is not exhaustive: Dutch also uses grave and circumflex accents in some words, such as bèta and enquête. The Dutch ij is typed as two letters, i + j, and both are capitalised at the start of a word: IJmuiden.

Sranan Tongo, the English-based creole that nearly everyone in Suriname understands (an estimated 440,000 speakers), is written in a Latin-based official spelling that also uses è and ò: Fa waka? (how are you?), Mi lobi yu (I love you), Switi Sranan (sweet Suriname). Many families also speak Sarnami Hindustani, Surinamese Javanese, Maroon languages such as Ndyuka and Saramaccan, Indigenous languages, and Chinese; the Dutch and Sranan Tongo collections and the Traditional Chinese collection cover their letters.

To type the Dutch letters on Windows, switch to the US-International layout and press ' then the vowel for é, or " then the vowel for ë; Alt codes work too, such as Alt + 0233 for é, Alt + 0235 for ë and Alt + 0239 for ï. On a Mac press Option + E then the vowel for the acute, or Option + U then the vowel for the diaeresis. On a phone, long-press the vowel.

Suriname emoji for food, holidays and the rainforest

Surinamese food is a mix of everyone who came: Hindustani roti 🫓🍛 with chicken 🍗, potatoes 🥔 and long beans 🫛; Javanese bami and saoto soup 🍜; Creole pom, an oven dish of grated pomtajer root 🫜 with chicken; pindasoep peanut soup 🥜🍲; bakabana, fried plantain 🍌; and the fiery Madame Jeanette pepper 🌶️. Cold schaafijs shaved ice 🍧 and a Parbo beer 🍺 cool things down.

Keti Koti ("the chains are cut"), on 1 July, marks the abolition of slavery in 1863 and is celebrated in Suriname and the Netherlands; ⛓️‍💥 broken chain is its emoji. Independence day, 25 November, gets 🇸🇷🎉. On New Year's Eve, Owru Yari, central Paramaribo disappears in smoke from pagara, long strings of red firecrackers 🧨🎆. Phagwa (Holi) brings coloured powder 🎨, Divali the clay lamps 🪔, and Eid 🌙 is a public holiday too.

More than 90 percent of Suriname is forest, much of it protected in the Central Suriname Nature Reserve. Its animals are the jaguar (🐆 is the nearest emoji), sloths 🦥, monkeys 🐒, giant river otters 🦦, harpy eagles 🦅, macaws and parrots 🦜, caimans 🐊, anacondas 🐍 and the blue poison dart frog 🐸; sea turtles 🐢 nest on its beaches. Rivers are the roads of the interior, travelled by dugout canoe 🛶.

Paramaribo, sport and the Surinamese abroad

The historic centre of Paramaribo, a UNESCO World Heritage site, is built of white wooden houses with dark green shutters. Its wooden Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral ⛪ is one of the largest wooden buildings in the Americas, Fort Zeelandia 🏰 guards the riverfront, and on Keizerstraat a mosque 🕌 and a synagogue 🕍 stand next to each other, one of the city's best-known sights. Hindu temples 🛕 are as much a part of the city.

Football ⚽ is the national passion, and many stars of the Dutch national team, among them Ruud Gullit, Frank Rijkaard, Clarence Seedorf and Edgar Davids, have Surinamese roots. Swimmer Anthony Nesty 🏊🥇 won Suriname's first Olympic medal, gold in the 100 m butterfly in Seoul in 1988. Kickboxing 🥊 champions such as Remy Bonjasky and Tyrone Spong were born in Paramaribo, and cricket 🏏 is played too.

A large Surinamese community lives in the Netherlands, which is why 🇸🇷🇳🇱 is a popular flag pair among Surinamese in the Netherlands. Neighbours are Guyana 🇬🇾, French Guiana 🇬🇫 and Brazil 🇧🇷; Hindustani, Javanese and Chinese Surinamese families sometimes add 🇮🇳, 🇮🇩 or 🇨🇳 for their roots.