# What authority assigns the "short" names of the Emoji?

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-authority-assigns-the-short-names-of-the-emoji/29665>\
**Category:** Site feedback\
**Created:** [June 4, 2015, 11:49pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-authority-assigns-the-short-names-of-the-emoji/29665 "2015-06-04T23:49:34Z")\
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**Author:** ![elijah](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/elijah/32/104055_2.png) [@elijah](https://meta.discourse.org/u/elijah)\
**Post date:** [June 5, 2015, 6:16pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/what-authority-assigns-the-short-names-of-the-emoji/29665/13 "2015-06-05T18:16:30Z")

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UTR#51 deals with emoji, but they don’t seem to deal with assigning short codes. It is merely vaguely touched on in the section on Input:

> **[6 Input - UTS #51: Unicode Emoji](http://unicode.org/reports/tr51/#Input)**
>
> Emoji are not typically typed on a keyboard. Instead, they are generally picked from a palette, or recognized via a dictionary. The mobile keyboards typically have a button to select a palette of emoji, such as in the left image below. Clicking on...

> [@](#):
>
> In some input systems, a word or phrase bracketed by colons is used to explicitly pick emoji characters. Thus typing in “I saw an #x3a;ambulance:” is converted to “I saw an 🚑”. For completeness, such systems might support all of the full Unicode names, such as :first quarter moon with face: for 🌛. Spaces within the phrase may be represented by \_, as in the following:
> 
> “my ⏰ didn’t work”
> 
> →
> 
> “my ⏰ didn’t work”.
> 
> However, in general the full Unicode names are not especially suitable for that sort of use; they were designed to be unique identifiers, and tend to be overly long or confusing.

However while 🌛 works here: 🌛 other names like 🍟 do not.

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