Mahjong South Wind Tile

🀁 represents the South wind tile in mahjong, marked with 南, the Chinese character for south. In a hand diagram it means that particular tile; beside a player's name or a round label, it can identify South as the seat or round wind. In a message, start with the literal mahjong reference.

Text symbol

What 🀁 means

South is one of four winds used as game tiles.

Mahjong is a Chinese tile game, usually played by four people who draw and discard tiles to build a winning hand. The wind tiles belong to the honors, a group outside the numbered suits. A standard set contains four South tiles.

A seat wind identifies a player's position in the game; a round wind applies to the table for that round. These are game roles, not instructions to face geographical south. Under many rules, a set of three or four South tiles earns extra value when South is your seat wind or the round wind. One South tile alone does not earn that bonus.

South does not make a numbered run with East and West. Wind tiles are grouped with identical tiles; the precise winning-hand and scoring rules depend on the form of mahjong.

Part of the collection

♠️

Card, Chess & Dice Symbols

What it means when someone sends it to you

3 readings

An actual South tile in the hand.

Don't confuse it with

南

CJK Unified Ideograph-5357

The character meaning south, also used on the tile's face. 南 is ordinary text; 🀁 represents the complete mahjong tile.

🀄

Mahjong Red Dragon

🀄 is the Red Dragon, the only mahjong tile with a colour emoji. 🀁 is a text symbol showing 南.

Combination ideas

The four winds in seat order: East, South, West, North.

South Wind triplet: scores when South is your seat or round wind.

The East round ends and the South round begins.

Big Four Winds: a triplet of every wind, a limit hand.

Worth knowing

Wind tiles appear in surviving mahjong sets from the 1870s. The game spread internationally during the 1920s.

Questions people ask

Is this the same game as matching pairs of tiles?

Not quite. Mahjong solitaire uses mahjong tile designs for a matching puzzle. Traditional mahjong is a multiplayer game of drawing, discarding and building hands; the South tile appears in both.