Tonga Emoji & Symbols

The Tonga flag emoji 🇹🇴 is not one picture in Unicode. It is two regional indicator letters, T and O (Tonga's ISO code), which phones and apps draw together as the flag; most country flags became emoji in 2015. On a system without flag support, such as Windows' own emoji font, you see the letters TO instead, but the text underneath is the same, so it still shows as a flag on the reader's phone.

The flag itself is one of the oldest in the Pacific. It was adopted in 1875 under King George Tupou I, and the constitution of that year says it shall never be changed. The red field stands for the blood of Christ and the red cross on the white canton for the Christian faith, which is why Tongans write it as ❤️🤍 or ❤️🤍✝️ and why ✝️ sits so naturally next to 🇹🇴. The coat of arms adds a crown 👑, a dove with an olive branch 🕊️, three stars ⭐ and three crossed swords ⚔️, under the motto Ko e ʻOtua mo Tonga ko hoku Tofiʻa, "God and Tonga are my inheritance". Tonga is a kingdom, the last Polynesian monarchy, and 👑 or 🫅 stand for the royal family; King Tupou VI has reigned since 2012. Captain James Cook called the islands the Friendly Islands in the 1770s, and Tonga is often described as the only Pacific island nation never formally colonised: it was a British protected state from 1900 to 1970 but kept its own king and government.

Tonga rugby emoji: 🏉 ʻIkale Tahi, Mate Maʻa Tonga and the Sipi Tau

🏉 is an emoji Tonga sends often. The rugby union team is ʻIkale Tahi, the Sea Eagles 🦅, and before every test the players face their opponents with the Sipi Tau, Tonga's war dance. The rugby league team is Mate Maʻa Tonga, "die for Tonga", and that phrase has become a rallying cry far beyond the sport. In 2017 several star players chose to play for Tonga rather than New Zealand or Australia, the team beat New Zealand on the way to a World Cup semi-final, and in 2019 Tonga beat Australia for the first time. On match days feeds in Nukuʻalofa, Auckland, Sydney and Salt Lake City fill with 🇹🇴🏉🔥, ❤️🤍💪 and MMT 🇹🇴, and fans wave flags from cars and rooftops.

At the Olympics, 🥊🥈 is Paea Wolfgram, the super-heavyweight boxer whose silver at Atlanta 1996 is Tonga's only Olympic medal so far. 🥋⛷️ is Pita Taufatofua, who carried the flag shirtless and glistening with oil, wearing a taʻovala, at Rio 2016 as a taekwondo fighter, came back at PyeongChang 2018 as a cross-country skier from a country with no snow, and carried the flag again in Tokyo.

Tonga island emoji: whales 🐋, reefs and the Hunga Tonga volcano 🌋

Tonga is about 170 islands, fewer than a quarter of them lived on, in the groups of Tongatapu with the capital Nukuʻalofa, Haʻapai, Vavaʻu, ʻEua and the far-north Niuas. 🏝️🌴🏖️ cover the beaches; ⛵ is Vavaʻu, whose sheltered Port of Refuge is a favourite stop for yachts crossing the Pacific. From about July to October humpback whales come to Vavaʻu and Haʻapai to give birth, and Tonga is one of the few places where visitors may swim with them, so 🐋🐳🤿 is the emoji of whale season. 🪸🐠🐢🐙 belong to the reefs, 🎣🛶 to the fishermen in their outrigger canoes.

🌋🌊 now mean one day for every Tongan: 15 January 2022, when the undersea volcano Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai erupted in the largest explosion recorded in the atmosphere for more than a century. The tsunami struck the coasts, ash covered Tongatapu, and the broken undersea cable cut the country off from the internet for weeks while relatives abroad sent 🙏🇹🇴❤️. 🌀 is the cyclone season, from November to April, which brought Cyclone Gita to Tongatapu in 2018. 🪨 is the Haʻamonga ʻa Maui, a stone gateway of three coral-limestone blocks built about 800 years ago, and the blowholes of Mapu ʻa Vaea send the sea shooting up through the reef 🌊. 🦇 are the flying foxes hanging in the trees at Kolovai, and 🦜 the red shining parrots of ʻEua.

Mālō e lelei! Kava, dance, Sunday and Tongan food emoji

Mālō e lelei is hello, so 👋🇹🇴 opens countless messages; Mālō ʻaupito 🙏 is thank you very much and ʻOfa atu ❤️ is "love to you", used for family and friends alike. 🌿🥥 is kava, made from the pounded root of a pepper plant, mixed with water in a wooden bowl and drunk from coconut-shell cups at a faikava, the evening gathering where men talk and sing, often with a string band 🎸. 💃🕺🎶 are the dances: the lakalaka, a standing group dance with sung poetry that UNESCO lists as intangible cultural heritage, and the tauʻolunga, the graceful solo dance of a young woman, during which family and guests press banknotes 💵 onto her oiled arms and shoulders, a custom called fakapale. 🎺 is the brass bands of churches and schools, 🥁 the lali drum that calls people to worship. Tongans dress up in a taʻovala, a fine woven mat worn round the waist, and value ngatu, the painted barkcloth (tapa); neither has its own emoji.

Sunday is holy by law: the constitution keeps the Sabbath, shops close and most work stops. The day is ⛪📖🙏 in the morning, a feast from the ʻumu, the earth oven of hot stones, at lunch, and 😴 in the afternoon, so ⛪🐖😴 is a Tongan Sunday in three emoji. The ʻumu gives roast suckling pig 🐖, yams and taro (🍠 is the nearest emoji), and lū pulu, corned beef 🥫 with onion and coconut cream wrapped in taro leaves 🥬. 🐟🥥🍋 is ʻota ʻika, raw fish in coconut cream with lemon or lime, and 🍌🍍🍉🥭 are the fruit of the Nukuʻalofa market. 🖤 has its own place: Tongans wear black for mourning, sometimes for months after the death of a close relative, and the whole kingdom wore black after the deaths of kings.

Tongan holidays, Tongans abroad and the emoji they send

4 June is Emancipation Day, which also marks the end of British protection in 1970; 4 November is Constitution Day, for the constitution of 1875; and the King's birthday brings the Heilala Festival in Nukuʻalofa, named after the red heilala, Tonga's national flower. Unicode has no heilala, so 🌺 is the flower Tongans use. Christmas 🎄 is a season of church choirs and family gatherings, and at New Year Tonga, at UTC+13, is one of the first countries in the world to see the fireworks 🎆, which is why 🎆🌏🇹🇴 does the rounds every 31 December.

A large share of all Tongans live abroad, above all in New Zealand 🇳🇿, Australia 🇦🇺 and the United States 🇺🇸, and they keep the islands close in their bios with 🇹🇴, ❤️🤍 and a line of Tongan. Fiji 🇫🇯 and Samoa 🇼🇸 are the nearest neighbours and the oldest rugby rivals; see our Fiji, Samoa and New Zealand collections for their emoji.

Tongan letters ʻ and ā, and the Tonga currency symbol

Tongan, lea faka-Tonga, is spoken by nearly everyone in Tonga, which CLDR estimates at about 100,000 people, and English is the second official language, used in government, business and schools (see our English collection). The Tongan alphabet has 17 letters, in this order: a e f h i k l m n ng o p s t u v and the fakauʻa, the glottal stop, which comes last. ng is one letter, written n + g and said as in "singer". The fakauʻa is a full consonant, a short catch in the throat, as in Nukuʻalofa, Haʻapai, Vavaʻu and ʻEua. The correct character is ʻ, U+02BB modifier letter turned comma, the same character as the Hawaiian ʻokina; most people type the left quotation mark ‘ instead, and the plain apostrophe ' is common in names like Mate Ma'a Tonga.

The toloi, a macron, marks long vowels: Ā ā Ē ē Ī ī Ō ō Ū ū, as in Mālō e lelei. To type them on a Mac, switch to the ABC Extended keyboard and press Option + A, then the vowel; Option + ] gives ‘ on the standard keyboard. On Windows, the Māori keyboard layout gives the macron vowels, and in Word you can type 02BB and press Alt + X for ʻ. On phones, long-press a vowel to find the macron letter. In HTML, ʻ is ʻ and ā is ā. The money is the paʻanga (TOP), split into 100 seniti; it has no Unicode sign of its own, so the Tonga currency symbol is written T$ or simply $, with 💵 and 🪙 as the emoji.