Merperson Emoji

🧜 is a merperson, half human, half fish, gendered variants split into 🧜‍♀️ mermaid and 🧜‍♂️ merman. The emoji gets used overwhelmingly for the mermaid reading. On TikTok, hashtags around mermaidcore alone crossed 15B+ views in 2023 off the back of Halle Bailey's Little Mermaid release.

Unicode approved 🧜 in Unicode 10.0 (2017) as U+1F9DCU+1F9DC MERPERSON, part of the fantasy-character batch with 🧙🧚🧛🧝🧞🧟. Skin tone modifiers are supported, which is rare in the set (only 🧙 and 🧝 also get them). The gender-neutral base is quietly radical in a mythology space where the female version has been the default for almost 200 years, ever since Hans Christian Andersen's 1837 story.

Default reading in a text: mermaid vibes, beach content, mermaidcore aesthetic, Disney references, or "I wish I could just live underwater." Merman shows up mostly for Triton, Aquaman, and Jason Momoa joke posts.

🧜‍♀️ is one of the most reliably aesthetic emojis in circulation. Beach photo dumps, Miami trip carousels, pool-day Instagram posts, aquarium visits, scuba gear unboxings, all lean on it. TikTok mermaidcore creators use it alongside 🐚🌊🫧 for outfit checks with iridescent scales, shell tops, and pearl makeup. The trend peaked in 2023 during the Little Mermaid release and has stayed in rotation ever since.

On X, the emoji gets a more varied read. "Mermaid era" captions are common among swimmers, synchronized skaters, and competitive divers. In flirty DMs, 🧜‍♀️ can signal "I'm unattainable and mysterious," a vibes-based compliment rather than a literal description. Self-deprecating versions ("me after four hours in the bath 🧜‍♀️") are equally common.

🧜‍♂️ is the minority variant but has its own pocket: Aquaman posts, the Jason Momoa attractiveness discourse, King Triton Halloween costumes, and occasional bodybuilding captions ("merman arc 🧜‍♂️💪"). The gender-neutral 🧜 is used rarely, mostly by Unicode enthusiasts and users who want to sidestep the gendered reading.

Mermaid mythology predates almost every emoji on this list. The oldest recorded mermaid-like figure is the Assyrian goddess Atargatis, worshipped around 1000 BC. She transformed into a fish after a tragic love affair with a mortal, keeping only her human head and torso, the structural template that stuck.

The Greek Sirens that modern readers associate with mermaid lore were originally bird-women, not fish-women. Homer's Odyssey describes them as sparrow-like creatures with female faces whose songs lured sailors to their deaths. The fishtail swap happened during the medieval period, first documented in the 8th-century Anglo-Latin catalog Liber Monstrorum), and the two types coexisted through the 14th century before the mermaid form won.

Hans Christian Andersen's "The Little Mermaid" (1837) gave modern readers the template: a young mermaid sacrifices her voice for legs and the chance to be loved by a human prince. Andersen's original ending is brutal (she dissolves into sea foam), but his structure, female creature, loss of power, pursuit of love, became dominant. Disney's 1989 animated adaptation softened the ending and added Ariel's red hair. That version, not Andersen's, is what the 🧜 emoji design most often references.

The 2023 Halle Bailey live-action remake pulled $569.6M worldwide but cost ~$380M to produce, making the profit margin thin. The release came with significant racist backlash, especially in East Asia where the film underperformed dramatically ($3.6M in China vs Lion King's $120M). The mermaidcore fashion wave happened alongside, and stayed long after the theatrical run.

1. -1000Assyrian goddess Atargatis first depicted as a fish-tailed figure, the earliest known mermaid-style deity
2. 800Anglo-Latin Liber Monstrorum becomes the first written record of a siren as a fishtailed creature rather than a bird-woman↗
3. 1837Hans Christian Andersen publishes 'The Little Mermaid' in Copenhagen, setting the template for modern Western mermaid narratives
4. 1989Disney's animated The Little Mermaid releases November 17, fixing Ariel's red hair and green tail as the default mental image
5. 2017Unicode 10.0 ships 🧜 as `U+1F9DC` in Emoji 5.0 alongside six fantasy siblings↗
6. 2023Halle Bailey's live-action Little Mermaid releases May 26; mermaidcore becomes the fashion micro-trend of the summer, 15B+ TikTok views↗
7. 2023Live-action Little Mermaid grosses $569.6M worldwide but underperforms dramatically in China and South Korea amid racist backlash↗

• •The oldest mermaid-like figure on record is the Assyrian goddess Atargatis from around 1000 BC, far predating Greek Sirens.
• •Greek Sirens in Homer's Odyssey were bird-women, not mermaids. The fishtail version didn't show up in writing until the 8th-century Liber Monstrorum.
• •Halle Bailey's 2023 Little Mermaid grossed $569.6M worldwide but cost ~$380M to make, leaving razor-thin margins after marketing.
• •In China, the 2023 Little Mermaid earned just $3.6M vs The Lion King (2019)'s $120M, a collapse that Deadline attributed largely to racist reception.
• •Mermaidcore hashtags crossed 15B TikTok views in 2023, making it one of the biggest fashion micro-trends of the decade.
• •Andersen's original 1837 ending has the Little Mermaid dissolve into sea foam after failing to win the prince's love. Disney changed it to a wedding.
• •Weeki Wachee Springs in Florida has hosted live underwater mermaid shows since 1947, the oldest continuously operating mermaid performance venue in the world.
• •🧜 is one of only three fantasy emojis in the Unicode 10.0 batch that ship with skin tone modifiers (the others are 🧙 mage and 🧝 elf). The rest are treated as fully supernatural.

• •Disney's animated The Little Mermaid (1989) is the dominant visual reference: red hair, green tail, singing voice. Most 🧜‍♀️ emoji designs trace back to Ariel.
• •Halle Bailey's live-action (2023) became the new Ariel for Gen Z and inspired the mermaidcore fashion wave.
• •Hans Christian Andersen's 1837 original story remains the template, and the Copenhagen statue by Edvard Eriksen (1913) is one of the most-photographed tourist sites in Scandinavia.
• •H2O: Just Add Water (Australian, 2006-10) and Mako Mermaids (2013-16) built an entire mermaid-girl Netflix audience that still recirculates on TikTok.
• •Aquaman (Jason Momoa, 2018 and 2023) gave the merman variant its current cultural weight. 🧜‍♂️ tags most thirst-content posts about Momoa by default.
• •Mermaid-themed cosplay pageants (MerMagic Con, Weeki Wachee Springs performances, Merfolk UK gatherings) are a real subculture that uses 🧜 as their default social tag.