no, just no, that name is infested with hate, while “Emoticons” r loved (we never talk about Smileys)
Where are they called emoji? But yes, I do think emoticons fits much better than anything else.
dont know tbh, thinking short names
I have been of the opinion that “emoji” applies to japanese ASCII ヘ(゜ο°; )ノ
while emoticons would be… 
1 Like
From my perspective, Apple is responsible for the emoji terminology and usage being made to a worldwide mainstream audience. The Japanese mobile market had emojis and Apple was forced to included it in their phones, which then made them available and popularized to a worldwide audience (the story is more involved, as I believe the original Japanese iPhone release didn’t have it/wasn’t compatible with the existing Japanese ‘standard’).
That said, I think from a modern perspective an emoticon is the original smile sequences (and related), such as :) or ;) whereas an emoji which is its own standardized unicode character. Although this breaks down a bit when services like Slack use the term “Custom Emoji” to describe custom emoticons.
However, based on reviews, I believe we can be thankful the Emoji Movie was not called the Emoticon Movie, as it prevents Messenger from being tainted. 
2 Likes
A bit from Wikipedia:
In web forums, instant messengers and online games, text emoticons are often automatically replaced with small corresponding images, which came to be called “emoticons” as well.
Also emojis and emoticons are 2 different things, but using something like this : slightsmile : is basically an emoticon, emojis mean picture characters, and emoticons mean emotion icons