Is it possible to use emoji in a source email?

Question

I would like to use the following:

```
ses.sendBulkTemplatedEmail(
  {
    Source: "\"😀 Example Name\" ",
    // ...
  }
  //...
)
```

To send an email with an emoji in the source email address. However, these emails do not seem to be sent despite the same email without the emoji being delivered as expected. Is there another step I need to take to make this work? Is it even possible to do this?  
  
Thanks for the help!

beepbop · Answer

In addition to the above, there might be some buggy behaviour. I don't seem to see an error when triggering the email with the emoji in the source email address, nor do I get a rendering failure. Other emails arrive in the test email account and nothing is landing in a spam folder. So, unless I am missing something, it appears this is silently failing.

beepbop · Answer

Thank you for your answer Brent, it works!

AWS-User-4207280 · Answer

Hi beepbop,  
  
In order to use an emoji in the sender name, you have to encode it using MIME encoded-word syntax. You can find more information in our documentation at https://docs.aws.amazon.com/ses/latest/DeveloperGuide/send-email-raw.html#send-email-mime-encoding-headers.  
  
MIME encoded-word syntax uses the following format:

```
=?charset?encoding?encoded-text?=
```

In your example, you'd use the following as the Source value:

```
source: "=?utf-8?B?8J+YgA==?= Example Name "
```

Breaking this down:   
- The 'utf-8' part indicates that we want to use 8-bit Unicode character encoding.  
- The 'B' indicates that we're encoding the characters using Base64 (tip: you can use websites such as  to quickly Base64 encode your emoji).  
- The '8J+YgA==' part is the 😀 emoji converted into Base64 format.   
  
Hope this helps. Thanks for using Amazon SES!  
  
Brent @ AWS

Is it possible to use emoji in a source email?

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