Merperson 🧜

🧜 directly refers to the folklore of half-human half-fish sea creatures, popularized by many tales and cultural productions. It's used to evoke an attraction to the sea and its mysteries, a fascination with aquatic fantasy stories, or simply a passion for swimming and the marine world in general.

This emoji has seen a resurgence of popularity with the rise of the so-called "mermaidcore" aesthetic, a visual style inspired by mermaids — pearly colors, glitter, scale patterns — widely adopted in fashion and decor online. Used in a caption or a bio, 🧜 then signals a specific aesthetic preference rather than a direct reference to the mermaid tale.

It also accompanies messages evoking lightness and childlike imagination: dreaming of a wonderful underwater world, reconnecting with nostalgia for stories told as a child, or simply expressing a sincere love of the sea and its creatures, with no more complex connotation than this sense of wonder.

The mermaid was added to the repertoire of fantastical emoji figures to represent this creature among the most well-known in global maritime folklore, alongside other characters like the genie or the fairy. Its design picks up the classic visual codes of the character, widely popularized by literature and animation.

🧜 is used to caption a beach or swimming photo ("relaxing day at the sea 🧜"), to evoke a passion for swimming or diving, or to accompany content with a "mermaidcore" aesthetic. It also appears in nostalgic conversations about childhood tales or cartoons featuring mermaids.

Its register stays light and dreamy, which makes it suited to most informal contexts, notably on social media where it frequently accompanies content related to summer, vacations, or an ocean-inspired visual style.