July 17 marks World Emoji Day

(Photo Courtesy by Chicago Tribune)

July 17 was World Emoji Day.

The pictographic language observed its fourth annual celebration on July 17. Emoji was a pictographic expression of emotions that came from the old days of Japanese mobile phones on the year 1999. According to daysoftheyear.com, emoji was derived from the Japanese word “e” which means picture and “moji” meaning character. Apparently, the seeming connection to the words ‘emotion’ and ‘emoticon’ were purely incidental.

Today, there are now 2,666 official emoji and for the third year running, the “Face with Tears of Joy” emoji dominated Twitter and Facebook and even became Oxford Dictionary’s Word of the Year back in 2015. Timeinc.net stated that five billion emoji were now sent daily on Facebook Messenger alone.

In celebration of World Emoji Day, a group of dedicated fans gathered in Dubai, Dublin, and Moscow dressed up in emoji-face costumes to set a new Guinness World Record. According to worldemojiday.com, July 17 was the chosen date for Emoji Day because the “calendar emoji” – a minimized version of Apple’s iCal icon – shows the default date of July 17.