What 🈁 means
It means “here” or “this place”, nothing more. The two characters inside are ココ, written in katakana, one of Japan's two syllabic scripts. They spell koko, the everyday Japanese word for the place where the speaker is. The emoji is the equivalent of a little “you are here” sticker.
It does its job next to something it can point at: a shop name, a station, an address, a photo of a doorway. “Meet at the north exit 🈁” says this exit, this one. Dropped into a message on its own, it says little to anyone who doesn't know it, and readers who don't know Japanese may take it for a logo, a kanji they can't read or a random decoration.
It is one of a small set of Japanese-word emoji, like (service) or (vacancy), that come from the sign badges on Japanese mobile phones. 🈁 is the simplest of the set: once you know it means “here”, it needs no further translation.
Neutral and practical: a pointer, not a feeling. It works best with words that name the place.
Readers who can't read Japanese may see only a square badge and miss “here” entirely.
Part of collections
What it means when someone sends it to you
3 readingsThis exact spot: here is where we meet, where it is, where you go.
Don't confuse it with
2
Related characters
1
Combination ideas
5Worth knowing
- In ordinary Japanese writing “here” is usually ここ in hiragana. The emoji spells it in katakana, ココ, which makes the word stand out as a sign rather than a word in a sentence.
- 🈁 is inherited from the emoji sets of Japanese mobile phone carriers of the 2000s, where it served as a “here” or destination sign; that is why it entered Unicode in 2010 with the first big emoji batch.
Questions people ask
2Can I use 🈁 if I don't speak Japanese?
Yes. Put it after the name of the place or next to a map pin, and the words explain while the emoji points. Sent alone to someone who can't read Japanese, it will probably be ignored.
Is 🈁 a kanji?
No. The characters inside are katakana, a sound-based script, and spell the plain word koko, “here”. Kanji are the Chinese-derived characters used in Japanese, like 空 in .
More like this
13
Collections with 🈁
8
How to type or find 🈁
- Also called
- koko · here sign · ココ emoji
- Search it as
- here button · you are here · location marker · ココ · japanese here · blue square japanese
- Type it as
- :koko:
- Around since
- 2010 · Emoji 0.6
- Shows up on
- Every phone · iPhone, Android, Windows, Mac, Linux
:koko:Common shortcode in Slack, GitHub, Discord, Mattermost and other chat apps; a few apps use a different name.🈁Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.