Text the Jolly Roger: Pirate flag emoji coming this summer

Pirates fans will soon be able to raise and also text the Jolly Roger.

A pirate flag is among the 157 new emojis to be released later this year.

The skull and crossbones should start appearing in emoji keyboards in August or September, just in time for a Pirates stretch run.

The pirate flag emoji was proposed by Jeremy Burge, editor in chief of Emojipedia, and Bryan Haggerty, a designer at Twitter.

"Pirates are a common theme in popular culture, but there is no other obvious way to indicate 'pirate' with emoji," the pair wrote in its proposal to the Unicode Consortium, the organization that approves new emoji for universal usage.

Twitter already allowed users to post a pirate flag emoji but only when using the Twitter website. The flag was still used 2,000 to 6,000 times a week. Burge and Haggerty wrote the flag could be used when talking about actual pirates or internet piracy.

The emoji will feature a white skull and crossbones on a black flag. Burge and Haggerty suggested the pirate flag appear right after the rainbow flag in emoji lists. The pair noted that the term "pirate flag" returns more than double the search results on Google than "rainbow flag" and "jolly roger" trends higher than "rainbow flag" and "pride flag" except in June, which is LGBT Pride month.

Other emoji recently approved by Unicode include faces with red hair and curly hair, a badger, a hippopotamus, a double helix, a roll of toilet paper, an abacus and a lobster. U.S. Sen. Angus King, of Maine, had lobbied Unicode to approve the lobster emoji.

Great news for Maine - we're getting a lobster emoji!!! Thanks to @unicode for recognizing the impact of this critical crustacean, in Maine and across the country. Yours truly,Senator

" Senator Angus King (@SenAngusKing) February 7, 2018

Aaron Aupperlee is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at aaupperlee@tribweb.com, 412-336-8448 or via Twitter @tinynotebook.