Goose Emoji

A white domestic goose shown in profile with an extended neck and orange beak. It fills a gap that existed for years: 🦆 Duck and 🦢 Swan had emojis since the early days, but the goose, their taxonomic sibling in the Anatidae family, got nothing until 2022.

The timing of its proposal is hard to separate from Untitled Goose Game, the indie hit from Australian studio House House that went viral in September 2019. You play as a goose terrorizing a small English village. It sold millions of copies, spawned the "Peace Was Never an Option" meme, and turned geese into an internet symbol of chaotic mischief. The goose emoji proposal was submitted to the Unicode Consortium on October 27, 2019, exactly five weeks after the game's release. The proposer has written about the journey, noting that geese were the only Anatidae member without representation.

Beyond gaming, geese sit at a strange cultural intersection. They're simultaneously silly ("you silly goose"), menacing (Canada goose attack videos), literary (Mother Goose, the Golden Goose), and surprisingly sacred (the Romans credited geese with saving the Republic from a Gallic invasion in 390 BCE). The emoji captures all of it.

🪿 is newer than most emojis (rolling out on iOS 16.4 in March 2023) so its usage patterns are still forming, but a few lanes are clear.

The primary use is playful mischief. "You're such a silly 🪿" has become the emoji version of the classic pet name. Parents and partners use it as a term of endearment with teeth: calling someone a goose means they're being ridiculous, but endearingly so.

Gaming communities adopted it immediately for Untitled Goose Game references. The 🪿 paired with 🔪 or 🗡️ recreates the "Peace Was Never an Option" meme. On Discord and Twitch, it's become shorthand for chaotic behavior.

Canadian users lean into it for Canada goose content, both the bird (famously aggressive, hilariously mean) and the brand (the jacket). There's also a niche but growing use in cottage and countryside aesthetics.

The goose fills a role that 🦆 and 🦢 can't. Ducks are cute and quacky. Swans are elegant and graceful. Geese are agents of chaos with excellent PR.

Geese have been culturally significant for millennia. In ancient Rome, geese were sacred to Juno (goddess of marriage and protector of the state) and were kept at her temple on the Capitoline Hill. According to Livy, in 390 BCE the temple geese honked loud enough to wake the Roman defenders when Gauls tried to sneak up the hill at night, saving the city. The phrase "the geese saved Rome" became proverbial.

In ancient Egyptian mythology, the "Great Cackler" or "Great Honker" was a primordial goose-deity whose honk was so powerful it laid the cosmic egg that birthed the sun or the world, depending on the version. Celtic traditions associated wild geese with the Holy Spirit, and geese symbolized vigilance, bravery, and loyalty. In Chinese poetry, wild geese are among the most beloved motifs, representing seasonal change, longing for home, and messages between separated lovers.

The English language is stuffed with goose idioms. "Wild goose chase" originally referred to a 16th-century horse race where riders had to follow a leader's winding path (resembling geese in flight), not actually chasing geese. "Goose bumps" comes from the resemblance between human skin's cold reaction and the pores on a plucked goose. "Silly goose," "what's good for the goose," "cooked your goose," and "Mother Goose" are all deeply embedded in the language. Aesop's "The Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs" gave us the idiom for destroying a valuable resource through greed.

Approved in Unicode 15.0 (September 2022) as U+1FABFU+1FABF GOOSE. The proposal (L2/21-219) was originally submitted on October 27, 2019 and argued that geese were the only member of the Anatidae family without emoji representation. The design specification recommended a domestic goose with an extended neck for maximal visual distinctiveness from 🦆 and 🦢. Google added support in late 2022, Apple followed with iOS 16.4 in March 2023, and Windows added support around August 2023.

1. 2019Untitled Goose Game released September 20, sparking goose meme culture. Goose emoji proposal submitted to Unicode October 27↗
2. 2019"Peace Was Never an Option" meme goes viral, combining Magneto quote with Untitled Goose Game imagery↗
3. 2022Goose approved in Unicode 15.0 (September). Google ships it on Android first↗
4. 2023Apple adds goose in iOS 16.4 (March). Windows follows around August↗

Geese carry different weight in different parts of the world. In Canada, the Canada goose is simultaneously a national symbol and a public menace: they're protected by law, aggressively territorial, and leave droppings everywhere. Canadians have a complicated love-hate relationship with them that generates endless memes.

In the UK, geese are associated with Christmas dinner (roast goose was the traditional centerpiece before turkey took over). In parts of East Asia, geese symbolize marital fidelity because many species mate for life. In rural communities worldwide, geese are guard animals: their aggressive honking alerts farmers to intruders, a tradition going back to those Capitoline geese in Rome.

The Untitled Goose Game reference is strongest in English-speaking internet culture. In other language communities, the emoji reads more straightforwardly as a farm bird or waterfowl.

• •"Wild goose chase" originally described a 16th-century horse race, not chasing geese. Riders had to follow a leader's winding path in a formation resembling wild geese in flight. Shakespeare used the phrase in Romeo and Juliet (1597), and it eventually shifted to mean any futile pursuit.
• •"Goose bumps" are named after the resemblance between chilled human skin and the pores on a plucked goose. The technical term is horripilation, from Latin horrere (to bristle) and pilus (hair).
• •"Mother Goose" first appeared in print in France in 1697 when Charles Perrault published fairy tales subtitled Contes de ma Mère l'Oye ("Tales of My Mother Goose"). Nobody knows if Mother Goose was a real person.
• •Canada geese are legally protected under the Migratory Birds Convention Act (1994), which means Canadians can't harm them even when they're hissing, charging, and blocking entire sidewalks. The birds know this and act accordingly.

• •Some people use 🪿 when they mean 🦢 (swan). Swans are elegant and romantic. Geese are aggressive and silly. Using the goose for a graceful moment will get you memed.
• •The goose emoji on some platforms looks more like a generic white bird than a clearly identifiable goose. Samsung and Google's designs are more distinctly goose-like than others.

• •Untitled Goose Game (2019) by House House turned the goose into a symbol of delightful chaos. You play as a horrible goose stealing gardening tools, chasing children, and generally ruining everyone's day. The game won the D.I.C.E. Award for Outstanding Achievement in Game Design and the BAFTA for Best Family Game.
• •The "Peace Was Never an Option" meme started on Twitter in September 2019 with the Untitled Goose Game goose holding a knife. The quote comes from Magneto in X-Men: First Class, but the internet adopted it as the official goose motto.
• •Mother Goose has been the face of nursery rhymes since Charles Perrault's 1697 collection. The identity of Mother Goose is one of literary history's unsolved mysteries.
• •Aesop's "The Goose that Laid the Golden Eggs" gave us the idiom for destroying a valuable resource through greed. The fable is at least 2,500 years old.
• •Top Gun: Maverick (2022) brought "Goose" back into pop culture conversation. Anthony Edwards' character Nick "Goose" Bradshaw in the original Top Gun (1986) made the callsign iconic.