Banana Emoji

A yellow banana, partially peeled on some platforms. 🍌 carries three distinct identities: the fruit, the innuendo, and the art object. Few emoji manage to be a healthy snack, a phallic symbol, and a $6.2 million artwork simultaneously.

Added in Unicode 6.0 (2010). The suggestive reading dominates in texting. Dictionary.com notes that "the phallic likeness of the banana emoji quickly lent it as a symbol for penis on social media." It's one of the emoji parents worry about most, alongside 🍑 and 🍆. Together, 🍆🍑🍌 form the unholy trinity of fruit-as-innuendo.

But the banana's cultural life extends far beyond sexting. Andy Warhol's 1967 banana for The Velvet Underground & Nico album cover became one of the most iconic images in pop art. In 2019, Maurizio Cattelan duct-taped a banana to a gallery wall) at Art Basel Miami, called it "Comedian," priced it at $120,000, and watched the art world lose its mind. In 2024, a second edition sold at Sotheby's for $6.2 million to crypto billionaire Justin Sun, who then ate it.

And then there's the extinction angle. The banana you eat today (the Cavendish) is not the banana your grandparents ate. The Gros Michel, sweeter and creamier, was wiped out by Panama disease in the 1950s. The Cavendish replaced it, but now Tropical Race 4 threatens the Cavendish too. The banana emoji might outlive the banana itself.

🍌 splits across its three lives.

The innuendo. Paired with 💦 or 😏, 🍌 is unmistakably phallic. It's one of the most common sexting emoji alongside 🍆 and 🍑. The curved yellow shape leaves little to the imagination. Parental monitoring apps flag it.

The fruit. 'Smoothie 🍌🥤' or 'Banana bread 🍌🍞' or just... a banana. The literal meaning still exists and is used in food content, health posts, and recipe sharing. Not everything is innuendo.

The absurdity. 'Going bananas 🍌' (losing it), 'banana for scale 🍌' (the Reddit meme where people place bananas next to objects to show size), and the general comedy energy of a fruit that's inherently funny. Slipping on a banana peel has been a slapstick comedy staple since at least the 1900s.

The art world angle adds a fourth lane. Since Cattelan's Comedian, 🍌 also signals absurdist art commentary. 'Is this art? 🍌' references the duct-taped banana that questioned the entire concept of value in art.

Depends entirely on context and time of day. In a recipe thread: food. In a flirty DM at night: innuendo. The banana is the most context-dependent emoji after 🍆. Its shape makes the suggestive reading inescapable, but plenty of people use it for actual bananas. If you're unsure whether someone means the fruit, look at what surrounds it. 🍌🥤 = smoothie. 🍌😏 = not a smoothie.

The banana has four origin stories, and they're all remarkable.

The agricultural origin. Bananas were domesticated at least 8,000 years ago in Southeast Asia. They're technically berries (strawberries aren't, bananas are). The word 'banana' probably comes from the Arabic word 'banan' meaning finger.

The extinction. Until the 1950s, the world ate the Gros Michel banana: sweeter, creamier, and more flavorful than what we have now. Panama disease (a soil fungus) wiped it out. The Cavendish replaced it because it was resistant to that specific fungus. But now Tropical Race 4 (a new strain) threatens the Cavendish. The banana industry is facing potential collapse again. History is repeating.

The reason banana-flavored candy doesn't taste like real bananas is widely believed to be because the artificial flavor was based on the Gros Michel, not the Cavendish. You're tasting a ghost banana. (Hank Green ate a Gros Michel to test this theory.)

The art origin. Andy Warhol's 1967 banana for The Velvet Underground & Nico album became one of pop art's defining images. The original album cover featured a peelable banana sticker: you could peel the yellow skin to reveal a pink banana underneath. It was provocative, playful, and perfectly Warhol.

52 years later, Maurizio Cattelan duct-taped a banana to a gallery wall) at Art Basel Miami 2019, titled it "Comedian," and priced it at $120,000. Three editions sold. Performance artist David Datuna then ate one of the bananas in a piece he called "Hungry Artist." In 2024, a second edition sold at Sotheby's for $6.2 million to crypto billionaire Justin Sun, who ate it too. A fruit that costs 35 cents became the most expensive banana in history. That's the banana: simultaneously trivial and priceless.

The comedy origin. Slipping on a banana peel has been a slapstick comedy staple since at least the early 1900s. Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and early vaudeville performers all used it. The banana peel slip became so iconic that it's now a universal symbol for unexpected physical comedy. Why bananas specifically? Because in the early 1900s, banana peels littered city streets (no trash cans, no litter laws) and people actually slipped on them.

Approved in Unicode 6.0 (2010) as U+1F34CU+1F34C BANANA. Added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015. Joins 🍆 and 🍑 in the fruit emoji that became innuendo.

• 🇹🇼
  1990: Taiwan: TR4 first identified in Cavendish plantations. Production drops from ~6 million tonnes/year to under 1 million within a decade.
• 🌏
  2013: Mozambique + Jordan: TR4 confirmed outside East Asia for the first time. The pandemic stops being regional.
• 🇨🇴
  2019: Colombia: [First Latin American detection](https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-02489-5). Colombia declares a national agricultural emergency. Quarantine zones cover 175 hectares of La Guajira.
• 🇵🇪
  2021: Peru: Confirmed in [Piura](https://www.promusa.org/Tropical+race+4+-+TR4), expanding the Latin American front.
• 🇻🇪
  2023: Venezuela: Spread continues. Roughly 80% of all bananas in international trade are still the same Cavendish clone.

1. 1967Andy Warhol designs the peelable banana cover for The Velvet Underground & Nico. It becomes one of pop art's most iconic images.↗
2. 1950Panama disease wipes out the Gros Michel banana. The Cavendish replaces it as the world's commercial banana.
3. 2019Maurizio Cattelan duct-tapes a banana to a wall at Art Basel Miami. 'Comedian' sells for $120,000. Performance artist David Datuna eats it.↗
4. 2024Comedian sells at Sotheby's for $6.2 million to crypto billionaire Justin Sun. He eats the banana.↗

• 🇭🇳
  1899: United Fruit Company founded: Boston-based UFC consolidates banana plantations across Honduras, Guatemala, Costa Rica, and Colombia. By the 1920s it owns more land in Honduras than the Honduran government.
• 📜
  1928: La Masacre de las Bananeras: [Colombian army opens fire on striking UFC workers](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banana_massacre) in Ciénaga, Magdalena. Death toll estimates run from 47 (army record) to 2,000 (US embassy cable). Gabriel García Márquez fictionalised it in [One Hundred Years of Solitude](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Hundred_Years_of_Solitude).
• 🇬🇹
  1954: Guatemalan coup: President Jacobo Árbenz tries to redistribute UFC's uncultivated land. The CIA, on UFC's lobbying, [orchestrates Operation PBSUCCESS](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1954_Guatemalan_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat) and removes him. UFC's then-counsel [John Foster Dulles was US Secretary of State](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allen_Dulles); his brother Allen ran the CIA.
• 💸
  2024: Chiquita liable: A Florida federal jury orders [Chiquita Brands (UFC's successor) to pay $38.3M](https://www.reuters.com/legal/chiquita-must-pay-38-mln-financing-colombian-paramilitary-group-jury-2024-06-10/) to families of Colombians killed by the AUC paramilitary group, which Chiquita admitted paying. The first time a US jury held a multinational accountable for atrocities abroad.

• •Bananas are technically berries). Strawberries, raspberries, and blackberries are not. The botanical definition of 'berry' doesn't match the grocery store definition.
• •The Gros Michel banana (sweeter, creamier) was wiped out by Panama disease in the 1950s. The Cavendish replaced it. Now Tropical Race 4 threatens the Cavendish. History repeating. Hank Green ate one to compare.
• •Andy Warhol's 1967 banana for The Velvet Underground & Nico featured a peelable sticker: you could peel the yellow skin to reveal a pink banana underneath. It's one of pop art's most iconic album covers.
• •Maurizio Cattelan's Comedian) (banana duct-taped to wall) sold for $120,000 in 2019 and $6.2 million in 2024. Both buyers ate the banana. The certificate says you can replace it when it rots.
• •The banana peel slip became a slapstick staple because it was a real urban problem. In early 1900s cities with no trash cans, discarded peels littered sidewalks and people actually fell.
• •The word 'banana' probably comes from the Arabic 'banan' meaning finger. A bunch of bananas is called a 'hand.' Each individual banana is a 'finger.'
• •The 'banana for scale' meme originated on Reddit (2005, popularized 2013) where users placed bananas next to objects to show their size. It became one of Reddit's defining inside jokes.
• •During the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns (2020), banana bread became the most searched recipe in many countries. 🍌🍞 was the emoji of pandemic baking.

• •The biggest risk: sending 🍌 innocently and having it read as innuendo. The phallic shape is so well-established in texting culture that even food-context bananas can trigger a double-take. If you mean the fruit, consider adding food context ('Smoothie 🍌🥤') to disambiguate.
• •In professional settings, 🍌 is risky outside of explicitly food-related conversations. A Slack message saying 'I brought 🍌🍌🍌 for the office' might raise eyebrows depending on your workplace culture.

• •Andy Warhol's banana (1967) for The Velvet Underground & Nico is one of the most iconic album covers in music history. The peelable sticker banana made the album a collectible. Warhol turned a fruit into art 52 years before Cattelan.
• •Maurizio Cattelan's Comedian) (2019) is the most famous banana in contemporary art. DW covered the $6.2M sale. Performance artist David Datuna ate one edition at Art Basel. Crypto billionaire Justin Sun ate the Sotheby's edition. The banana was replaced both times. You're buying the idea, not the fruit.
• •Banana Phone (Raffi, 1994) is a children's song about using a banana as a phone. In 2004, a Flash animation loop went viral, making it one of the earliest internet meme songs.
• •The banana peel slip is one of the oldest slapstick gags in comedy. Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, and early vaudeville performers all used it. It endures because physical comedy is universal and timeless.
• •In Mario Kart, dropping banana peels is a core game mechanic. Players leave them on the track to make opponents spin out. The banana peel slip went from real-world hazard to slapstick gag to video game weapon.

• •🍌 is U+1F34CU+1F34C. Unicode name: BANANA. Common shortcodes: :banana::banana: (Slack, Discord, GitHub). Part of Unicode 6.0 (2010).
• •For content moderation: 🍌 in combination with 💦, 😏, or 🍑 should be flagged as potentially suggestive content. In food contexts (paired with 🥤, 🍞, 🥣), it's benign. Context-aware moderation is essential.
• •The 'banana for scale' meme means placing a banana next to an object for size reference. If your app shows product dimensions, consider a 🍌 Easter egg. Reddit would appreciate it.

See the full Emoji Developer Tools guide for regex patterns, encoding helpers, and more.