Just wait for or create an Emoji IME which suggests emoji based on name. This already exists in Windows 10.

I don't know if there's a default OS solution that's any good, but I have a file of emoji + their text names and I use bemenu (like dmenu) to filter through it by name and put the selection on my clipboard. I bind this script to super-z on my keyboard in my Sway config. I based it on something[0] I found online that used dmenu or rofi and input the text for you. I adapted it to work better on Wayland by using a Wayland-native menu instead.

[0] https://github.com/LVMBDV/emoji

I'm probably missing some newer ones now. Not sure how the original list was made.

Emacs's M-x insert-char may be able to do something kinda similar. I know describe-char works great for identifying an emoji at least.

Windows, macOS, iOS, and Android all have dedicated emoji keyboards with search readily accessible. All Apple keyboard (software or hardware) from the last… 5(?) years have a button to bring it up!

Though in Linux there isn't only one window manager. This guy/woman/? chose to use his specific window manager (probably a tiling one), but he/she/xe could also use GNOME if he/she/xe wanted to. GNOME does have an emoji keyboard.

btw, this is much cooler than GNOME or whatever...

> They chose to use their specific window manager (probably a tiling one), but they could also use GNOME if they wanted to. GNOME does have an emoji keyboard.

There you go! Made it much easier for you and the reader!

But really,

> I'm not sure which window manager they're using, but GNOME does have an emoji keyboard

Even better!

Thanks, turns out I am not good at forming sentences. I'm not gonna edit it so your comment doesn't get irrelevant.