🍊 Tangerine

🍊 Tangerine is one of the fruit in Unicode's Food & Drink group. In practice it comes up around c, citrus, fruit and nectarine. Unicode also files it under orange and vitamin, which shows how widely it is read.

You can drop 🍊 into chats, social posts, headlines or a bio. On SmileyZone it is filed under Food and Drink. It joined the standard with Emoji 0.6 in 2010, so support on current devices is reliable. Its code point is U+1F34A.

• 🍊 on its own already flags the topic: c.
• Fits messages about c, citrus, fruit and nectarine.
• Often seen near 🍉 Watermelon, 🍋 Lemon and 🍈 Melon.

Mandarins and oranges are a New Year gift in China: the word for mandarin, jú, resembles the character for luck, and the golden colour stands for prosperity. They are handed over in pairs, since even numbers are auspicious.

In Europe the orange long belonged on the Christmas plate, arriving from the south in winter and counting as a luxury – a trace of which survives in the St Nicholas tradition.

• 🍊🥭 – Tangerine and Mango
• 🍊🍏 – Tangerine with Green Apple
• 🍊🍎 – Tangerine plus Red Apple
• 🍊🍉 – Tangerine and Watermelon
• 🍊🍑 – Tangerine with Peach
• 🍊🍌 – Tangerine plus Banana
• 🍊🍇 – Tangerine and Grapes
• 🍊🍋 – Tangerine with Lemon

Easy to mix up with 🍉 Watermelon, 🍋 Lemon or 🍈 Melon. They sit in the same Unicode subgroup and look similar at small sizes, so it is worth checking the name before sending.