The Heart Eyes (😍) emoji is an

ideogram An ideogram or ideograph (from Greek "idea" and "to write") is a graphic symbol that represents an idea or concept, independent of any particular language, and specific words or phrases. Some ideograms are comprehensible only by famili ...

that is used in communication to express happiness towards something. The

Unicode Consortium The Unicode Consortium (legally Unicode, Inc.) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization incorporated and based in Mountain View, California. Its primary purpose is to maintain and publish the Unicode Standard which was developed with the intentio ...

listed it as the third most used emoji in 2019.

Development and usage history

Development of emojis began in Japan in the 1990s, when NTT DoCoMo released a

pager A pager (also known as a beeper or bleeper) is a wireless telecommunications device that receives and displays alphanumeric or voice messages. One-way pagers can only receive messages, while response pagers and two-way pagers can also acknow ...

with the option to send a red heart in the text. Another pager was released and marketed at businesspeople by NTT DoCoMo but without the red heart. It received backlash, which caused NTT DoCoMo to change its stance and alert competitors to the demand for such

s. The concept exploded in the country, causing NTT DoCoMo employee

Shigetaka Kurita (born May 9, 1972, Gifu Prefecture, Japan) is a Japanese interface designer and often cited for his early work with emoji sets. Many refer to him as the creator of the emoji, a claim clarified in recent years. He was part of the team that cr ...

to create a set, which became known as emojis. Many of

focused on icon-like designs, portraying the weather, occupations, and mood. He didn't use any of the yellow-faced emojis we frequently use today. At some point in the evolution history, the yellow-faced emoji and the hearts were combined to create the heart eyes emoji. The first known version of this was in The Smiley Dictionary. The Dictionary was a plugin created by Nicolas Loufrani in the late 90s to allow people to send emoticons online. Unlike Kurita's designs, Loufrani focused solely on smiley designs representing emotion. One of these designs was titled "love", which replaced the eyes of the smiley with two red hearts. It had a typical smiley design, with a broad smile. Later designs from

Unicode Unicode, formally The Unicode Standard,The formal version reference is is an information technology standard for the consistent encoding, representation, and handling of text expressed in most of the world's writing systems. The standard, wh ...

changed the design to have a slightly opened mouth.

Popularity

Since the launch of the

emoji set, the heart eyes emoji has grown in popularity. In 2019, it was rated as the third most used emoji behind the

Red Heart emoji The Red Heart (❤️) emoji is an ideogram that is used in communication to express care and as a romantic gesture. It is frequently seen as the most popular emoji in surveys. The emoji was first used in communication by NTT DoCoMo, and its creat ...

and

Face with Tears of Joy emoji Appearance in 167x167px Face with Tears of Joy (😂) is an emoji that represents a crying with laughter facial expression. While it is broadly referred to as an emoji, since it is used to demonstrate emotion, it is also referred to as an emoti ...

. It frequently appears in the top 10 lists for the most common emoji.

References

{{Emoji navbox Emoji Heart symbols