Flag: New Zealand

New Zealand, or anything Kiwi: the country, its people, its teams. "Kiwi" is what New Zealanders call themselves, after their flightless national bird, so the flag turns up in bios as "where I'm from", next to ✈️ on a trip, and in bursts of national pride. The biggest single use is sport: when the All Blacks, the national rugby team, play, the flag floods timelines with 🏉. On 6 February, Waitangi Day, the national day marking the 1840 treaty between Māori chiefs and the British Crown, it fills posts, and on 25 April it sits beside 🇦🇺 for ANZAC Day, when both countries remember their war dead.

One thing to know before you use it for Māori topics: the flag carries the Union Jack, a reminder of British colonial rule, and some New Zealanders, Māori especially, do not feel it represents them. New Zealand also has an official national Māori flag, the black, white and red Tino Rangatiratanga, but it has no emoji. So 🇳🇿 means the country as a whole; when Māori identity is the point, use words rather than this flag.

Is that New Zealand or Australia?

Count the stars: four red for New Zealand, six white for Australia. Both flags are blue with the Union Jack in the corner and the Southern Cross, a small constellation seen in southern skies. New Zealand's four stars are red with white edges. Australia's are white, one of them tiny, plus a big seven-pointed star under the Union Jack that New Zealand's flag doesn't have. At emoji size the colours are the quickest tell: red stars, New Zealand.

The flag has been official since 1902 and has outlasted attempts to replace it. In a two-stage referendum in 2015–16, voters chose to keep it over a blue-and-black design with a silver fern, the frond that the All Blacks and other national teams wear.