What 🉤 means
A wish of double happiness for a couple getting married.
The Chinese character 喜 (xǐ) means joy. Written twice, side by side and fused into one shape, it becomes 囍, “double happiness”: joy doubled for the two people marrying. It is one of the most familiar decorations at a Chinese wedding: cut from red paper and stuck on doors and windows, printed on invitations and red money envelopes. The same sign marks weddings in Vietnam (song hỷ), turns up on Korean wedding-gift cloths and travels with Chinese communities around the world. If you have ever seen a red sign that looks like two boxy characters joined at the waist, that was it.
🉤 is that sign drawn as a round, medallion-style emblem. It entered Unicode in 2017 in a set of six rounded auspicious words: fortune , prosperity , long life , joy , double happiness 🉤 and wealth . Each of them stands for the blessing its character names.
A well-loved legend credits the sign to Wang Anshi, a scholar of the Song dynasty: he supposedly passed the imperial exam and married on the same day, and wrote 喜 twice to mark the double joy. It is a folk story, not a documented origin.
Why does it show as a box, and what should I send instead?
Few fonts include it; use 囍 for anything that must display.
🉤 has no colourful emoji picture. It is drawn only if the reader’s device has a font covering this corner of Unicode, and as of 2026 many phones and desktop systems ship without one, so the character often appears as a hollow rectangle or a question mark. The meaning does not change, but the reader cannot see it.
If you want to congratulate a couple in a message, on an invitation or on a cake order, type 囍. It is an ordinary Chinese character that practically every phone and computer can show, and it is the form Chinese speakers themselves write. Keep 🉤 for decorative text on a page whose font you control.
Warm, formal and festive: a traditional marriage blessing, not a casual “happy for you”.
It reads as a wedding wish; sent to someone who isn’t marrying it puzzles, and it may not display at all.
Part of collections
What it means when someone sends it to you
4 readingsA blessing for the couple: may your joy be doubled.
Don't confuse it with
2
Related characters
1
Combination ideas
3Worth knowing
- Five of the six rounded symbols, fortune, prosperity, long life, joy and wealth, make up the traditional “five-fold happiness” set; double happiness 🉤 was encoded alongside them as an extra sixth.
Questions people ask
3Is 🉤 an emoji?
No. It is a plain text symbol with no colour image, so it looks like whatever font draws it, and on many devices nothing draws it. For something that reliably shows, use the character 囍.
Can I use the double-happiness sign for Lunar New Year?
Not really. 囍 belongs to weddings. For the New Year the sign people hang is 福 (fortune), often upside down; its rounded form is .
How is shuangxi pronounced?
Roughly “shwahng-shee”, with a high, level tone on the first syllable and a dipping one on the second. The single character 囍 is also read simply xǐ, “shee”.
More like this
11
Collections with 🉤
3
How to type or find 🉤
- Also called
- double happiness · shuangxi · shuang xi
- Search it as
- 囍 · wedding symbol · chinese wedding sign · double joy · marriage symbol · rounded shuangxi · 1F264
- Shows up in
- Anything that takes text · its shape is whatever your font draws
🉤\1F264Codes and encoding1 code points
A visible symbol can contain several code points. JS .length counts UTF-16 units; UTF-8 counts bytes.