Talk:Person with Headscarf emoji

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Requested move 7 May 2025

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The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: not moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Bensci54 (talk) 17:02, 22 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Person with Headscarf emoji → Hijab emojiHijab emoji – I feel like the tital is unnecessary a bit long. Emojipedia also named it as "Hijab emoji". 🍕BP!🍕 (🔔) 14:18, 7 May 2025 (UTC) — Relisting. ASUKITE 20:33, 14 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Emojipedia does not call it "hijab emoji". The Emojipedia entry is at the URL https://emojipedia.org/person-with-headscarf and "Woman with Headscarf" is the title used on the page. A search of Emojipedia for hijab turns up multiple entries titled "Woman with Headscarf". Google gives 68,000 hits for "hijab emoji"; 4,640 for "woman with headscarf emoji"; and only 839 for "person with headscarf emoji" so there may be a "common name" argument but I haven't dug into the sources. --MYCETEAE 🍄‍🟫—talk 19:12, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Lean oppose per above and lack of evidence of significant ongoing coverage consistently using "hijab". There was a lot of coverage of the original Hijab Emoji Project and eventual release of this emoji in 2017. Once Unicode determined the official name, usage became more mixed in news and tech sources, and the coverage I can find is both limited and mixed today. Absent a clear usage pattern in independent, reliable sources, use of the official Unicode name seems appropriate. --MYCETEAE 🍄‍🟫—talk 19:39, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Note: WikiProject Islam and WikiProject Emoji have been notified of this discussion. ASUKITE 20:33, 14 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Relisting comment: Relisted to give more time for consideration of WP:COMMONNAME, which typically trumps the official name. ASUKITE 20:33, 14 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I did Google News searches for "headscarf emoji" and "hijab emoji" for the past two years. Because of the refined search, most results were non-news–overwhelmingly from Pinterest, Instagram, and other social media platforms. I looked at the first 10 pages of results for each, skipping the social media results. Again, sourcing is limited, results are mixed, and headscarf had a slight edge.
  • The Telegraph labels it "Woman with headscarf" and then in the description says, "This emoji, also known as the hijab emoji…"
  • Feminist.co profile of the creator uses both interchangeably. Hijab appears 21 times on the page and headscarf appears 7 times.
  • Cooper Hewitt uses both in describing their exhibit. "Hijab emoji" is used three times descriptively in running text; "Person with Headscarf emoji" is always used in captions and when referring specifically to the emoji itself.
  • Here Cooper Hewitt uses only "Person with Headscarf emoji" for the caption
  • IFDM reporting on the Cooper Hewitt exhibit uses hijab descriptively but names the emoji using headscarf: "Rayouf Alhumedhi, for example, was 15 years old when he proposed the emoji of a woman wearing the hijab, seen from the shoulders up. The process of designing and submitting emoji to the Unicode Consortium – the global regulatory body responsible for maintaining standards across digital devices – will be told through the story of two emoji: the ‘person wearing a headscarf’ and the ‘interskin couple’, preserved in the Cooper Hewitt’s permanent collection." They use "Headscarf" a second time in a caption for an image of the emoji, "hijab" is used only once, as quoted.
  • This Bessemer Ventures profile of the creator uses only "headscarf" – she presumably had input into writing this bio.
  • Weischer uses "headscarf".
  • Teal.is uses "headscarf".
  • Hollywood Life uses "hijab" in a section header but then calls it "headscarf" twice in running text.
  • Conscious Clutter uses "hijab".
  • This Seasia.co article from from February 2025 claims that Apple iOS previously included only "a generic headscarf emoji" and that the new version includes the addition of specific hijab emojis. (For what it's worth, I wasn't able to quickly locate these "true hijab" emojis on my iPhone.)
This is consistent with my earlier findings: That around 2017, when the emoji was officially approved, coverage shifted towards increasing use of its official name, and ongoing coverage largely stopped. A few sources are careful to use "person with headscarf emoji" when referring specifically to the Unicode character but also use "hijab" descriptively or generically. In addition to the examples above, Dictionary.com uses the official name and provides this definition: "The Person with Headscarf emoji 🧕 depicts a person, usually a woman, wearing a headscarf. Most versions of the emoji portray the person wearing a hijab, a headscarf traditionally worn by Muslim women. For this reason, the Person with Headscarf emoji 🧕 is most often used to refer to Muslim women." Our article similarly says the emoji "is typically used to convey a woman wearing a hijab".
It's common for emojis to go by a variety of names "in the wild" and the official name is useful in clearly identifying the subject–we use Face with Tears of Joy emoji for 😂 and not some variation of "crying–laughing emoji". In other words, the official name is PRECISE and unambiguous. One could argue "hijab emoji" is over-precise, because the emoji could depict any sort of headscarf generically. If there were a clear pattern favoring this usage, it would be worth having that debate. There is no insufficient evidence on which to build a COMMONNAME argument in support of "hijab emoji"—usage is at best split and I find at least a slight preference for "person with headscarf emoji", especially in sources that are careful about referring to the Unicode emoji specifically. --MYCETEAE 🍄‍🟫—talk 15:14, 15 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.