Tunisia Emoji & Symbols

🇹🇳 the Tunisian flag is the emoji Tunisians reach for first: for pride, a match of the national team, Independence Day on 20 March, or a bio that says where you are from. It is a red field with a white disc holding a red crescent and a red five-pointed star, so in hearts it becomes ❤️🤍, and the crescent and star alone are ☪️ or 🌙⭐. The flag goes back to the Husainid beys of the early 19th century, long before independence, which makes it one of the older national flags in the Arab world.

🦅 Eagle stands for the national football team, the Eagles of Carthage (Nousour Qartaj), whose badge carries an eagle; 🇹🇳🦅⚽ is the standard match-day line. 🌼 Blossom and 💐 Bouquet stand in for jasmine, the flower Tunisia is known by: there is no jasmine emoji, and the small white star-shaped flowers are sold in summer as the machmoum, a tight little posy that men tuck behind the ear and give away in the evening. Jasmine also gave its name, abroad, to the revolution of 2010–2011.

The coat of arms adds three more: a Carthaginian galley ⛵, a lion holding a sword 🦁 and a pair of scales ⚖️, read as freedom, order and justice. For Tunisia's neighbours see our Algeria and Libya collections; Morocco and Egypt are close relatives too, and every other country is in Flag Emoji.

Tunisia flag emoji: copy and paste 🇹🇳, and why Windows shows TN

The Tunisia flag emoji is not one stored picture but two regional indicator letters, 🇹 and 🇳, the country code TN, which phones and Macs draw as the flag. Windows has no country-flag pictures in its emoji font, so on a Windows PC the same emoji shows as the letters TN; copy it anyway, because whoever reads it on a phone sees the flag. On Discord you can type :flag_tn:.

The country and its capital share one name in Arabic, تونس (Tūnis, said Tounes in Tunisian), which is why "Tunisia" and "Tunis" get mixed up in searches. Arabic is the official language and Tunisian Arabic, Derja or Tounsi, is what about 12.5 million people (an estimate) speak every day; French, used by an estimated 6 million, is everywhere in business, universities and shop signs. See the Arabic, Tunisian Arabic and French collections for the full alphabets.

Tunisian Arabic letters, ڨ and the dinar symbol د.ت

Tunisians write Standard Arabic with the 28 letters above, from ا to ي, plus the hamza seats أ إ آ ؤ ئ and the word endings ة and ى. For Derja many also use ڨ (qaf with three dots above), a Maghrebi letter for the hard g that Tunisian Arabic has and Standard Arabic does not. Arabic punctuation is mirrored: the comma is ، the semicolon ؛ and the question mark ؟. Like the rest of the Maghreb, Tunisia writes its numbers with the digits 0–9, not the ٠١٢٣ forms used further east.

In chats Tunisians often write Derja in Latin letters and digits, the way the rest of the Arab world does but with a Tunisian twist: 3 for ع, 7 for ح, 5 for خ and 9 for ق, as in 3aslema or 9a3ed. On a phone, add the Arabic keyboard; on Windows, add Arabic (101 or 102) in Language settings; on a Mac, add Arabic in Keyboard settings.

The currency is the Tunisian dinar, code TND, divided into 1,000 millimes. It has no sign of its own in Unicode: it is written DT (dinar tunisien), as in 20 DT, or د.ت in Arabic. For money talk people use 🪙 💰 and 💱.

Tunisian food emoji: harissa, couscous, brik and mint tea

🌶️ is harissa, the red chilli paste that goes into almost everything; UNESCO added Tunisian harissa to its intangible heritage list in 2022. There is no couscous emoji, so 🍲 or 🥘 does the job; couscous was inscribed by UNESCO in 2020 as the shared heritage of Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco and Mauritania. 🍳🍅 is ojja, eggs cooked in a spicy tomato and pepper sauce, 🥚 the egg inside a brik, thin pastry folded round egg, tuna and parsley and fried crisp, and 🫘 the chickpeas of lablabi, the cumin and harissa soup poured over torn bread. 🥪 is the Tunisian sandwich and its small fried cousin the fricassé, with tuna, olives, egg and harissa; 🫓 is tabouna or mlawi flatbread, 🥖 the daily baguette.

🫒 is the olive: Tunisia is one of the world's largest producers of olive oil, with groves running from Sfax to the north. 🌴 means dates, above all the translucent Deglet Nour of Tozeur and Kebili, 🍊 the oranges of Cap Bon, 🌵 the prickly pears sold from carts in summer, and 🐟🐙 the fish and octopus of the coast; the fish is also a lucky sign, painted on doors and worn as jewellery beside the khamsa 🪬.

Sweet things: 🍩 is bambalouni, the sugared fried doughnut eaten in Sidi Bou Said, 🍪🍯 makroudh, semolina and date pastries from Kairouan soaked in honey syrup, and 🍮 assidat zgougou, the cream made from Aleppo pine seeds for the Prophet's birthday. 🫖🌿 is mint tea, often served with pine nuts floating in the glass, and ☕ the café, where a capucin or direct comes with the newspaper.

Holidays, football and Tunisia in places

In Ramadan people wish each other Ramadan Karim 🌙🕌 and break the fast at sunset with dates and milk, then chorba and brik. Eid al-Fitr brings new clothes and trays of sweets 🍪🍯🎉, and at Eid al-Adha, the Aïd el-Kebir, families sacrifice a sheep 🐏. 🤲📿🕋 cover prayer and the Hajj, and 🕍 the El Ghriba synagogue on Djerba, one of the oldest in Africa, whose spring pilgrimage draws Jewish visitors from around the world. National days bring 🇹🇳🎆: Independence Day on 20 March (1956), Republic Day on 25 July and Women's Day on 13 August, marking the 1956 Code of Personal Status.

⚽ is the national obsession, from the derby of Espérance and Club Africain in Tunis to Étoile du Sahel in Sousse. The Eagles of Carthage won the Africa Cup of Nations at home in 2004 🏆, were the first African team to win a World Cup match (3–1 against Mexico in 1978) and beat France 1–0 at the 2022 World Cup. 🎾 means Ons Jabeur, the first Arab and first African woman of the Open Era to reach a Grand Slam singles final, and 🏊🥇 the Olympic swimming champions Oussama Mellouli and Ahmed Hafnaoui; 🏃 recalls Mohamed Gammoudi's 5000 m gold in 1968, and 🤾 handball, where Tunisia is one of Africa's strongest sides.

🏛️ is Carthage, the Phoenician city whose ruins stand in the suburbs of Tunis, and Roman Dougga; 🏟️ the great amphitheatre of El Djem; 🐘 Hannibal, Carthage's general, who took war elephants over the Alps. 🚪💙🤍 are the blue doors and white walls of Sidi Bou Said, 🏺 the pottery of Nabeul, 🏖️🌊☀️ the beaches of Hammamet, Sousse and Monastir, 🏝️ the island of Djerba, and 🦩 the flamingos of the lagoons. In the south 🏜️🐪🐎 are the dunes around Douz and its winter Festival of the Sahara, and 🎬 the film sets: Tatooine in Star Wars is named after the town of Tataouine, and Luke Skywalker's home was filmed in Matmata.