Moai 🗿

How to read it

🗿 is U+1F5FF, approved in Unicode 6.0 in 2010 under the character name MOYAI, which it keeps; moai is its short name in Unicode’s emoji lists. Unicode’s code chart describes it as a “Japanese stone statue like Moai on Easter Island”. It came from the emoji of Japan’s mobile carriers: Unicode’s mapping file lists it in KDDI’s set only, and Emojipedia names au by KDDI. Emojipedia suggests the name and origin point to the Moyai statue near Shibuya Station in Tokyo, and says earlier Google and Microsoft designs looked like it. Time Out Tokyo describes that statue as resembling an Easter Island moai, donated to Shibuya Ward by the people of Niijima in 1980. Most vendors draw a grey stone head with a prominent brow and nose, most often facing left.

Also searched as: 🗿, moai emoji, moyai, stone face emoji.

What the statues are

Rapa Nui is the island’s own name. UNESCO, which lists Rapa Nui National Park as a World Heritage site, describes the moai as colossal statues representing ancestors, carved by a society of Polynesian origin, and says the island is inhabited today by descendants of the ancient Rapa Nui as well as later immigrants.

How younger people use it

Emojipedia records it as a stoic, deadpan or silly face, and as the face of the “sigma” and “chad” memes, for its chiselled, emotionless features. Its use has climbed fast. In Google’s Gboard keyboard data, reported by The New York Times in August 2026, it rose from 482nd most-used emoji in 2021 to 33rd in 2025. ThePrint’s summary of that report says Gen Alpha and Gen Z use it as a deadpan reaction, a straight face or a sarcastic “really?”; the Deseret News adds the raised eyebrow, and says that on Reddit it is mainly Gen Alpha who use it.

Look-alikes

😐 neutral face and 😑 expressionless face are the older deadpan faces, and Unicode’s keywords for them say so: awkward, meh, unimpressed, whatever, and “deadpan” itself for 😐. The moai’s keywords are only face, moai, moyai, statue, stoneface and travel. The deadpan reading comes from the people using it, not from Unicode.