Black Heart Emoji

A heart, solid black. Merriam-Webster describes it as conveying "love, affection, sympathy" while also noting its associations with "sorrow, grief, horror, evil, and dark humor." That duality is the point. 🖤 is the heart that carries both love and its shadows.

The emoji has a technical backstory most people don't know. In Unicode's typography heritage, "black" historically meant "filled" or "solid," not the color black. The character ♥ (U+2665 BLACK HEART SUIT) and ❤ (U+2764 HEAVY BLACK HEART) are both named "black" but render as red on modern devices. They were called "black" because they were solid shapes, as opposed to outlined versions. When Unicode approved 🖤 in Unicode 9.0 (2016) as U+1F5A4 BLACK HEART, it was the first heart emoji that actually looked black. Emojipedia noted that it "really means it with the black in the name" and "enters a confusing landscape of character names" where two existing "black" hearts were actually red.

The color black has carried the meaning of mourning in Western culture since at least the Roman Empire, but its most intense cultural codification came from Queen Victoria. After Prince Albert died in 1861, Victoria entered a mourning period that lasted forty years. She mandated that only black mourning jewelry could be worn at court until 1880. The preferred material was Whitby jet, a petrified wood from the Jurassic period found in Yorkshire, England, perfectly black and light enough for jewelry. Victorians even wove hair of the deceased into jewelry pieces as a way of keeping the dead close. 🖤 inherits this entire tradition: black has meant grief in the West for over 2,000 years, and Queen Victoria made it fashionable.

But 🖤 isn't just grief. In medieval alchemy, the black heart symbolized the nigredo phase, the first stage of spiritual transformation where old patterns dissolve. This wasn't about evil. It was about necessary destruction preceding renewal. The black heart meant you had to break down before you could be rebuilt. In Lakota tradition, black is the color of wisdom and introspection. The emoji carries echoes of all of this, even if most users are just expressing a vaguely edgy aesthetic.

🖤 operates across several registers that coexist without conflicting.

The first is alternative identity. Goths, emos, punks, metalheads, and anyone who prefers black clothing, dark aesthetics, and non-mainstream culture have adopted 🖤 as their heart. Where ❤️ is conventional love, 🖤 is unconventional love. It's the heart you choose when the red one feels too default. This register is the most common on Instagram and TikTok, where 🖤 appears in bios, captions, and comment sections of alternative fashion, dark academia, and goth content.

The second is grief and solidarity. During the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests following George Floyd's murder, 🖤 became a symbol of mourning and support. Emojipedia's analysis found it was the third most-used emoji in BLM tweets on June 3, 2020, after the raised fist and red heart. It's also used in memorial posts and tributes.

The third is dark humor and sarcasm. Gen Z uses 🖤 when they're being "edgy, self-aware, and ironic." "Love that for me 🖤" after something terrible happens is the 🖤 at its most sardonic. It carries the same energy as 🙃 but in heart form: smiling through something dark.

At work, 🖤 is niche but usable in creative industries and design. "All-black color scheme approved 🖤" in a design channel reads as on-brand rather than morbid.

The story of 🖤 is inseparable from the cultural history of black as a color of mourning.

Black has signaled grief in Western culture since at least the Roman Empire, where dark togas were worn during periods of mourning. But the tradition reached its most extreme expression in Victorian England. When Prince Albert died in December 1861, Queen Victoria was devastated. She entered a mourning period that lasted the remaining forty years of her life. She wore black every day until her own death in 1901. She mandated that only black mourning jewelry could be worn at court until about 1880.

The mourning jewelry itself was extraordinary. The preferred material was Whitby jet, a type of petrified wood from the Jurassic period, found along the coast of Yorkshire, England. It was perfectly suited: deeply black, lightweight, easy to carve, and could be polished to a beautiful sheen. GIA notes that genuine Whitby jet became the luxury standard. Mourning jewelry featured locks of the deceased's hair woven into brooches and lockets, because Victorians believed hair contained something of the person's essence and, being somewhat imperishable, symbolized immortality. A black heart brooch in 1870 carried love AND loss, the dead AND the living, beauty AND grief. 🖤 inherits all of this.

But black hearts predate Victoria. In medieval alchemy, the black heart represented the nigredo, the first stage of spiritual transformation where old patterns must dissolve before renewal can begin. The nigredo was necessary, not evil. You had to break down to be rebuilt. In Lakota tradition, black was the color of wisdom and introspection, not death. These older meanings persist beneath the surface.

When Unicode approved 🖤 in Unicode 9.0 (June 2016), it entered a landscape where two existing "black hearts" were actually red. The typography term "black" meant "filled/solid" rather than colored, so ♥ (BLACK HEART SUIT, 1993) and ❤ (HEAVY BLACK HEART, 1993) both rendered as red hearts despite their names. 🖤 was the first heart that was genuinely, unambiguously black. Emojipedia noted it "really means it with the black in the name."

The emoji found its defining cultural moment in 2020. During the Black Lives Matter protests following George Floyd's murder, 🖤 became a symbol of mourning and solidarity. It was the third most-used emoji in BLM tweets on June 3, 2020. A heart from Victorian mourning traditions, through medieval alchemy and Indigenous wisdom, found new purpose as a symbol of collective grief against racial injustice.

Approved in Unicode 9.0 (2016) as U+1F5A4U+1F5A4 BLACK HEART. Added to Emoji 3.0 in 2016. Notable as the first truly black heart in Unicode. Previous characters named "black heart" (♥ U+2665, ❤ U+2764) used "black" to mean "filled/solid" in typographic terms and actually render as red. 🖤 resolved this 23-year naming confusion by being a heart that is genuinely, unambiguously black.

1. 1861Prince Albert dies. Queen Victoria enters 40 years of mourning, mandating black jewelry at court and making black the definitive Western color of grief↗
2. 1993Unicode 1.1 includes ♥ (BLACK HEART SUIT) and ❤ (HEAVY BLACK HEART), but "black" means "filled/solid," not the color. Both render as red.↗
3. 2016Unicode 9.0 approves 🖤 (U+1F5A4) as the first genuinely black heart emoji, resolving 23 years of naming confusion↗
4. 1979Bauhaus releases 'Bela Lugosi's Dead' (recorded January 26 at Beck Studios in Wellingborough, single take), widely cited as the first record in the gothic rock genre and the start of black-as-subcultural-identity↗
5. 2020🖤 becomes 3rd most-used emoji in #BlackLivesMatter tweets (June 3) as a symbol of mourning and solidarity↗

The meaning of black in the context of hearts and mourning varies significantly across cultures. In Western traditions, black has signaled grief since the Roman Empire, codified most intensely by Queen Victoria's 40-year mourning period (1861-1901). In many East Asian cultures, white is the traditional color of mourning, not black, which means 🖤 doesn't carry the grief connotation in those contexts. In Lakota tradition, black represents wisdom and introspection, a positive association. In medieval European alchemy, the black heart symbolized the nigredo, a necessary stage of transformation, not evil. The 🖤 emoji means different things to different people, and those differences trace to centuries-old cultural divergences about what the color black represents.

• •🖤 was the first genuinely black heart in Unicode's 23-year history. Previous characters named "black heart" (♥ U+2665, ❤ U+2764) used "black" to mean "filled/solid" and rendered as red. Emojipedia said 🖤 "really means it with the black in the name."
• •After Prince Albert's death in 1861, Queen Victoria mourned for 40 years, wearing black daily until her own death in 1901. She mandated black Whitby jet jewelry (petrified Jurassic wood) at court. Victorians wove hair of the deceased into mourning brooches.
• •In medieval alchemy, the black heart represented the nigredo, the first stage of spiritual transformation. It symbolized necessary destruction before renewal, not evil. In Lakota tradition, black is the color of wisdom and introspection.
• •🖤 was the third most-used emoji in #BlackLivesMatter tweets on June 3, 2020, following George Floyd's murder. Usage peaked on June 2nd. It served as a symbol of both mourning and solidarity.
• •The emoji was adopted by emo and alternative subcultures between 2017-2019 and gained further traction on TikTok and Instagram in the 2020s for heartbreak, dark fashion aesthetics, and emotional depth.

• •Some people read 🖤 as negative or cold, but it's most commonly used for love and affection with an alternative edge. The black color doesn't negate the heart shape. It modifies it.
• •In East Asian cultures where white (not black) is the traditional mourning color, 🖤 may not carry the grief connotation Western users assume. Cultural context affects how the color reads.
• •Sending 🖤 to someone who expected ❤️ can feel like a downgrade. The person may wonder why you chose the "dark" heart instead of the "normal" one. Both are love, but the color choice communicates something about the flavor of that love.

• •Billie Eilish made 🖤 part of her visual brand during the "When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?" era (2019). Her all-black outfits, dark music videos, and Instagram aesthetic turned 🖤 into the unofficial emoji of alternative pop. Fans adopted it as a tribal marker.
• •Corpse Husband, the anonymous deep-voiced YouTuber and musician, used 🖤 extensively in tweets and Instagram stories during his peak popularity (2020-2021). His faceless persona and dark aesthetic made 🖤 the default emoji in his fandom's communications.
• •🖤 is used in Black Lives Matter contexts on social media, particularly during the June 2020 protests. The Blackout Tuesday campaign (June 2, 2020) saw millions of Instagram posts using 🖤 as a solidarity symbol. The emoji carried both mourning for Black lives lost and support for the movement.
• •NZ Rugby (the All Blacks) and other sports teams with black as their primary color use 🖤 in official social media communications. The All Blacks' Instagram is filled with 🖤, making it one of the few sports teams where an emoji color matches the actual team identity.