An Acadian flag emoji? Online petition gathers thousands of signatures

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When Alexis Belliveau was searching for an Acadian flag emoji to put in a social media caption promoting his band on National Acadian Day one year ago, he quickly realized one didn’t exist.

Emojis are icons often used in text messages and emails that represent emotions, ideas and objects. There are thousands of emojis, including hundreds of different flags.

Belliveau and his friend Julien Robichaud, both of Moncton, N.B., are in the process of submitting a proposal for the creation of an Acadian flag emoji to Unicode, which is a non-profit organization based in California that reviews and approves emoji idea submissions.

“There’s a lot of pride in the Acadian flag,” Belliveau said. “In a digital world, it would be nice to be able to express that through an emoji.”

“I think it also gets kind of the kids more involved in the Acadian culture.”

A smiling man wearing sunglasses and a black bandana. He is also wearing black overalls. — Alexis Belliveau came up with the idea after searching for an Acadian flag emoji and realizing one didn’t exist. He said it’s important for Acadians to be able to express themselves, especially in a digital world. (Hope Edmond/CBC)

Belliveau and Robichaud also launched an online campaign Tuesday as a way to strengthen their application. The website includes a brief description of the history of Acadians, what the flag means and a petition that has over 10,000 signatures.

“Anything will go a long way … to make our application strong,” Belliveau said.

“As much support that … can prove that this emoji will be used by the culture and the population in general will go a long way.”

LISTEN | ‘A way for Acadians to express themselves’:

Shift – NB7:33Acadian Emoji

There are over 250 flag emojis for countries and cultures around the world — but no Acadian Flag. That’s something Alexis Belliveau wants to change. We’ll talk to him about his petition to get the flag turned into an official emoji.

Although an Acadian flag emoji doesn’t exist, Belliveau says that hasn’t stopped people from expressing their Acadian pride through sequences of emojis.

Some include:

🔵⭐⚪🔴
⭐(followed by an emoji of the flag of France)
💙⭐🤍❤️
🟦⭐⬜🟥

According to Unicode’s website, the organization can decide to decline a request if the concept of the emoji is already represented by another sequence of emojis. And the organization announced in 2022 that many flag proposals would no longer be accepted because of “their open-ended nature” and “infrequent use.”

Belliveau said there is a “loophole” around that regulation since the proposed emoji is a combination of two already existing emojis: the star and the flag of France.

Acadian flag. Striped red, white and blue with a star in the top left corner. — Although people are still expressing their Acadian pride through various emoji sequences, Belliveau is calling for a specific emoji. (Emoji Acadie)

Unicode’s website also notes that guidelines for approving an emoji include distinctiveness, how often it would be used worldwide, if it has multiple meanings and whether it can be used in a sentence.

Belliveau said he’s working on getting the word out to Acadians across the world and plans to officially submit the proposal this winter.

“We’ll try to get the word as far out as we can in places,” he said. “In Louisiana, in France, and Quebec, and all across Canada, you know, there’s Acadians all over the world.”