Purple Heart Emoji

A purple heart. On the surface, it's one of many colored heart emojis expressing love and affection. But 💜 has two specific associations that set it apart from the rest. First, it's the official emoji of the BTS fandom. BTS member Kim Taehyung (V) coined the phrase "I purple you" (보라해, borahae) at a fan meeting on November 13, 2016. He explained that purple is the last color of the rainbow, and to him it means "we will trust and love each other for a long time." Since then, 💜 has become so strongly linked to BTS that Emojipedia's analysis found "BTS" and "Army" among the top n-grams associated with the emoji on Twitter. It's the third most popular heart emoji on X, largely driven by millions of BTS fans. Second, in the US, 💜 references the Purple Heart medal, the country's oldest military decoration, established by George Washington in 1782 for soldiers wounded or killed in combat. Beyond K-pop and the military, 💜 is often called the "safe heart," since Merriam-Webster notes it conveys warmth without the romantic weight of ❤️.

On X (Twitter), 💜 is overwhelmingly a BTS/ARMY emoji. Emojipedia found that 79.5% of its usage overlaps with the red heart in terms of shared words and phrases, but the BTS-specific n-grams (member names like Jimin, Jungkook, Taehyung) are what push it to #3 among all hearts. On Twitch, the purple heart is one of the most popular emotes, tied to the platform's purple brand identity (hex #6441a5). Viewers fill chat with 💜 to show love for a streamer's content. On Instagram and WhatsApp, 💜 is more general: a softer, less intense alternative to ❤️ that works for friends, family, and acquaintances. It ranks #33 in global emoji usage across all emojis, which is remarkable for a colored heart variant. The color purple also carries associations with creativity, spirituality, royalty, and LGBTQ+ solidarity, so 💜 picks up these connotations in the right contexts.

The purple heart emoji draws meaning from three very different sources, and all of them matter.

The oldest is the Purple Heart medal, established by George Washington on August 7, 1782 as the "Badge of Military Merit," originally a heart-shaped piece of purple cloth. General Douglas MacArthur redesigned it to its modern form in 1932. More than 1.8 million Purple Hearts have been awarded to US service members since its creation, making it the country's oldest military decoration still in active use. When Americans use 💜 on Veterans Day or Memorial Day, they're referencing nearly 250 years of military history.

The most culturally dominant association, though, is K-pop. On November 13, 2016, BTS member V (Kim Taehyung) created the word "borahae" (보라해) at a fan meeting. He combined "bora" (purple) with "saranghae" (I love you) and explained: "purple is the last color of the rainbow, and it means we will trust and love each other for a long time." The phrase went viral. Purple became BTS's signature color. ARMY fans adopted 💜 as their identifier. The cultural impact was so significant that HYBE (BTS's parent company) tried to trademark "borahae" in 2021, but South Korea's Intellectual Property Office rejected the application, ruling that the phrase belongs to V, not the company. The KIPO noted that HYBE "applied for trademark rights despite being aware that the trademark is used by V."

The third association is Twitch. The streaming platform uses purple (#6441a5) as its brand color, and the purple heart is one of Twitch's most popular chat emotes, dating back to the platform's Justin.tv origins.

Approved in Unicode 6.0 (2010) as U+1F49CU+1F49C PURPLE HEART. Added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015. Part of the original heart color set alongside ❤️ Red, 💛 Yellow, 💚 Green, 💙 Blue, 💗 Growing Heart, 💖 Sparkling Heart, and others. The heart's meaning was generic until BTS adopted purple as their color in 2016, which fundamentally changed how this specific heart is used on social media.

1. 1782George Washington establishes the Badge of Military Merit (Purple Heart medal) on August 7↗
2. 1932General MacArthur redesigns the Purple Heart medal to its modern form
3. 2010Unicode 6.0 standardizes 💜 as U+1F49C PURPLE HEART↗
4. 2015Added to Emoji 1.0, becoming available on iOS and Android
5. 2016BTS member V coins "borahae" (I purple you) at a fan meeting on November 13, making 💜 the BTS fandom symbol↗
6. 2021HYBE files to trademark "borahae"; Korean IP Office rejects it in 2022, ruling the phrase belongs to V↗

In South Korea and across K-pop communities worldwide, 💜 is almost exclusively associated with BTS. Sending it to a Korean person who follows K-pop will likely be read as a BTS reference, intentional or not. In the United States, 💜 carries a dual meaning: K-pop love and military honor (the Purple Heart medal). US veterans and military families use it on Veterans Day (November 11) and Purple Heart Day (August 7). On Twitch, 💜 is platform culture, tied to the streaming service's purple branding. In broader Western usage, purple is associated with creativity, royalty, spirituality, and LGBTQ+ solidarity. In Japan, purple (murasaki) historically represented nobility and has Buddhist associations. The same emoji carries very different weight depending on who's reading it.

• •The Purple Heart medal is the oldest US military decoration still actively awarded. It was established by George Washington in 1782, and more than 1.8 million have been given to wounded or killed service members.
• •BTS member V created "borahae" (보라해, I purple you) by combining "bora" (purple) with "saranghae" (I love you). He chose purple because it's the last color of the rainbow, symbolizing eternal love.
• •Emojipedia's data shows 💜 is the third most popular heart emoji on X, behind ❤️ and 💕. Top n-grams include "BTS" (#7), "Army" (#8), and individual member names like Jimin (#56) and Jungkook (#71).
• •South Korea's Intellectual Property Office rejected HYBE's attempt to trademark "borahae" in 2022, ruling the phrase belongs to V personally. A nail company had also tried to trademark it in 2020 but withdrew.
• •On Twitch, the purple heart is one of the oldest and most popular emotes, dating back to Justin.tv before Twitch even existed. The platform's brand color (#6441a5) makes 💜 the default way to show streamer love.
• •Pantone named PANTONE 18-3838 Ultra Violet Color of the Year for 2018, citing Prince, Bowie, and Hendrix as artists who made the shade a 'personal expression of individuality'. Pantone had separately released 'Love Symbol #2' for the Prince estate in August 2017, a custom hue specifically not Ultra Violet, so two different official 'Prince purples' exist in the same Pantone catalog.
• •On the asexual flag (designed by AVEN community vote in 2010), the purple stripe stands for the community itself: pride, unity, shared identity. The color was inherited from AVEN's longtime purple website branding. Among ace-spec users, 💜 reads as 'ace love', which is a quietly load-bearing meaning that almost never surfaces in mainstream emoji explainers.

• •Sending 💜 to a BTS fan without knowing the borahae context. They'll assume you're ARMY, and if you're not, the subsequent conversation will be confusing.
• •Using 💜 casually in a Veterans Day thread where people are honoring service members with the Purple Heart medal in mind. Mixing K-pop energy with military solemnity doesn't land well.
• •In some friend groups, sending a colored heart instead of ❤️ gets analyzed for hidden meaning. 💜 instead of ❤️ can be read as "I'm keeping you at arm's length" even if you just like the color purple.

• •BTS member V (Kim Taehyung) coined "borahae" (보라해, "I purple you") at a 2016 fan meeting, explaining that purple is the last color of the rainbow and means "I will trust and love you for a long time." The phrase turned 💜 into the universal symbol of the BTS-ARMY bond. ARMY floods every BTS-related post with 💜, and the emoji became so identified with the group that other K-pop fandoms deliberately avoid it.
• •Prince (1958-2016) made purple his signature color decades before emoji existed. Purple Rain (1984), his purple guitars, his purple wardrobe. When he died in April 2016, social media turned 💜 into a memorial. Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook were flooded with 💜 tributes. The Pantone Color Institute even named a shade "Love Symbol #2" in his honor.
• •Twitch's brand color is purple (#9146FF), making 💜 the default affection emoji on the platform. Streamers sign off with "love you chat 💜" and subscribers use 💜 to show support. The association is so strong that 💜 in a gaming context almost always signals Twitch community membership.
• •Cadbury, the British chocolate brand, has used purple (#472F92) as their brand identity since 1914 and has attempted to trademark the color multiple times. Their social media frequently deploys 💜 as on-brand messaging, making them one of the few corporations with a legitimate claim to a heart emoji color.
• •Netflix's Purple Hearts (2022) starring Sofia Carson became one of the platform's biggest hits of the summer. Google Trends shows "purple heart meaning" spiked from 33 to 59 in Q3 2022, a near-doubling driven by people who saw the movie and wondered whether the title had military or romantic significance. It did both — the film is a military romance.

• •U+1F49CU+1F49C. Single codepoint, no variation selector needed.
• •On Slack: :purple_heart::purple_heart:. On GitHub: :purple_heart::purple_heart:. On Discord: :purple_heart::purple_heart:. Consistent across platforms.
• •If building K-pop or fandom features, be aware that 💜 has extremely strong BTS association. Using it in a generic music app might confuse Korean users into thinking it's a BTS-branded feature.
• •Twitch's brand purple is #9146FF (newer) or #6441a5 (older). The emoji 💜 doesn't match either exactly, but close enough that Twitch chat treats it as on-brand.

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