How about instead we create an inline-able image, to differentiate between actual use of an emoji and using it to reference Ethereum upgrades?
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Using an emoji then allows for ascii text and other image types to represent the concept.
Lodestar & Nimbus display owls (ascii text) at Capella transition.
Given that @protolambda is letting go of Duhbe (due to some people having difficulty spelling), it looks like Deneb might be the default winner for the D-starname.
https://twitter.com/protolambda/status/1608870312090955777
Caneb (Cancun + Deneb)
Could we perhaps make our own images and get them standardized in unicode? This is partially a joke, and partially a serious proposition.
Alternatively, maybe we can get the Ethereum logo standardized in unicode, and then we can add new ZWJ emoji sequences that, say, combine the Ethereum logo and the owl/swan.
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It feels like we’ve naturally converged towards this proposal, with people using Shapella (and now Dencun) more and more. Another property that’s nice for this is you can tell by looking at the name whether it’s a CL/EL-only upgrade (star or city) vs. a CL+EL upgrade (combined name).
3 names is bad. i would prefer to choose EL or CL names and use that as the overall release name.
also given how few people know star names, i don’t agree with @timbeiko that it’s really that obvious whether shapella is a combined name or a CL name
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EL (first) + CL name would make it: Caneb (Cancun + Deneb).
Though using CL first would make them alphabetical.
What happens after more than 26 hardforks?
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Start back at A for CL upgrades (every 10 or so years).
Luckily there are a few star names to choose from, so unlikely to run out in the next century. 
Why don’t we start using https://semver.org/ for Ethereum upgrade names, with a mnemonic like https://www.r-project.org/ uses?
Example: Ethereum X.1.0 “Shanghai Capella”
(I’m not sure what the X would be)
Things like gas repricings and the DAO fork would be patches, things like adding opcodes and new transaction types would be minor versions, and things like the merge (since it removed the original functionality of the DIFFICULTY opcode) and any SELFDESTRUCT changes would be major versions.
Please no - first, it’s no fun! Fun is a big part of Ethereum - this forum is literally called EthMagicians 
!
Second, too much confusion with “Ethereum 1.x”, “Ethereum 2.0”, etc. That said, once we’ve cycled through all of the A-Z stars, and have caught up to devcon(nect) cities + all major conferences, I’m fine letting that go. Ethereum should be boring infrastructure by then 
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What about using byte words?
- Encodes a [CBOR] structure tagged with the data type [URTYPES], and is therefore self-describing.
- Uses a dictionary of exactly 256 English words with a uniform word size of 4 letters.
- Only two letters of each word (the first and last) are required to uniquely identify each byte value, making a minimal Bytewords encoding as efficient as hexadecimal (2 characters per byte) and yet less error prone.
- Additionally, words can be uniquely identified by their first three letters or last three letters.