Proposal for Emoji: KNIGHT

Submitters: ***** ; *****

2021-05-03

1 Identification

A CLDR short name :

Knight

B Other keywords :

medieval | chivalry

2 Images

License

The sample images and the sample font included in this proposal were created by me and me alone.
As such I own all IP Rights (as defined in the Emoji Proposal Agreement & License) in the Proposed Emoji.
I hereby declare that the Unicode Consortium and its members are granted the right to use,
edit and redistribute these contents in any way they want without restriction.

*****

3 Category

People & Body > person-fantasy > after woman supervillain (before mage)

Selection factors — Inclusion

A Compatibility. Are these needed for compatibility with frequently-used emoji in popular existing systems, such as Snapchat, Twitter, or QQ?

No

B Usage level. (See questions below) Measures that can be presented as evidence include the following:

Frequency. Is there a high frequency of use?

Since knight is a common family name in order to disambiguate it I used "Knight Sword" in my searches which may exclude a lot of relevant results.

B.1.a Google Search

B.1.b Bing Search

Bing is strangely conservative with the number of results it returns.

B.1.c Google Video Search

B.1.d Google Trends: Web Search

B.1.e Google Trends: Image Search

Multiple usages. Does the emoji have notable metaphorical references or symbolism? This does not include puns.

It is used in the following idioms in English : knight in shining armor / knight of the road / white knight

The knight is a historical character from the Middle Age. It is one of its symbol. It can also represent the values of chivalry such as honour and bravery.

In fantasy universes the knight can represent human characters (as opposed to other fantasy characters such as elves 🧝 or wizards 🧙)

As of 2021-05-03, 137 fictional knights have a wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Fictional_knights

The word 'knight' is a source of inspiration for popular fictional characters who are not typical medieval knights such as Dark Knight (Batman) or Jedi Knight (Star wars).

Use in sequences. Can the emoji be used in sequences?

One can use white ⚪ + knight or black ⚫ + knight

It could also be used with other characters :
🤴 👸 + knight to represent the king, the queen and their knight
🧝 🧙 + knight who are three of the main fantasy characters

Breaking new ground :

Yes.

*****' hobby is to write stories using emoji and whenever he needs to represent a knight the only solution he has is to use 💂

It can be argued that the knight is already represented as the chess knight ♘ but it is only circumstantial.
Emojis convey meaning through images and using a horse to represent a human wearing an armour is not very intuitive.
In addition, people not familiar with chess would not understand the meaning of a message using the chess knight emoji to represent a knight.
Last, using the chess knight would not work in other languages. ***** personally knows that it would not work in French.

The Queen for instance has three representations depending on the context in which it is used : ♕ 🂭 👸

One could also argue that a knight could be represented as ⚔️ + 🧔 but that is not obvious. Not every man holding a sword is a knight.
As an example it is very unlikely that someone would interpret the following sequence ⚫ + ⚔️ + 🧔 as 'the Dark Knight' without giving it a lot of thought.

C Distinctiveness. Explain how and why your emoji represents a distinct, visually iconic entity.

The emoji submitted wears a helmet that is a highly distinctive and recognizable feature of knights. There are no other entity usually represented wearing a helmet of this shape. It is emphasized by the fact that it fully covers the face which as a bonus makes it gender neutral. The knight is a historical and fictional character that does not have any substitute in the current emoji set.

D Completeness. Does the proposed emoji fill a gap in existing types of emoji?

Elf and wizard are two of the main characters of Fantasy universes but the knight is not present in the standard emoji set. That is also the case of the royal family that does not have a knight to protect them.

Selection Factors for Exclusion

E Petitions or “frequent requests”

No such thing in the proposal

F Overly specific

No

G Open-ended

No.

H Already representable

No (See Breaking new ground)

I Logos, brands, other third-party IP rights, UI icons, signage, specific people, specific buildings and landmarks, deities

The images make use of some common identifiers of the knight. None of them are proprietary. A reverse image search in Google does not return anything similar.

J Transient

No. Knights are both historical characters and popular fictional characters.

K Faulty comparison Are proposals being justified primarily by being similar to (or more important than) existing compatibility emoji?

No

L Exact images

No. The proposed image may be adaptated by vendors.

M Region flags without code

Not applicable

N Lack of required rights or license for images

The image are the original work of one of the submitters (*****). ***** ' Proposal Agreement is attached. ***** warrants ownership of all IP Rights in 2.c and 2.d and in the license.pdf file attached.

O Variations on direction

Not applicable

P Includes text

No

Other information