Middle Finger Included in Unicode Consortium's Latest List of Emojis

Unicode Consortium, the body responsible for standardising graphic symbols, announced its version 7.0 of the Unicode Standard on Monday.

The Unicode Standard 7.0 is said to include 2,834 new characters including new currency symbols for the Russian rouble and Azerbaijani manta. It also includes roughly 250 new pictographic emoji symbols, and 23 new scripts along with added characters in the existing scripts. These scripts also support for written languages of North America, China, India, other Asian countries, and Africa.

Some of the other updates included in the Unicode Standard 7.0.0 are the improvements to Unihan database with the addition of 3,000 new Cantonese pronunciation entries, enhancements in the Indic script properties including "properties for joining behavior, new classes for numbers, and a further division of the syllabic categories of viramas and rephas," as per the official blog post by Unicode. The full detailed changelog of characters can be accessed from the Unicode.org website.

Emojipedia notes (via iClarified) the full list of new emojis, including the 'Reversed Hand with Middle Finger Extended' emoji, which is also known as the Middle Finger Emoji, Rude Finger Emoji, and Flipping the Bird Emoji.

It is worth noting that the Unicode Consortium still did not include the ethnic diversity in emojis as reported in March. It was noted that Apple was working with Unicode Consortium to expand the range of emojis or emoticons to include a wider representation for ethnic groups.

Apple started the process after users protested about the lack of diversity and ethnicity options offered by the company. The users' petition on dosomething.org points said that of Apple's current list of emojis only two could be thought to depict a race other than Caucasians, specifically one 'man with Gua Pi Mao' hat, and 'one man with turban'. Apart from ignoring other significant ethnicities, the fact that the only icons for diversity are stereotypical representations doesn't help.