Python - replace unicode emojis with ASCII characters

With the tip about unicodedata.name and some further research I managed to put this thing together:

import unicodedata
from unidecode import unidecode

def deEmojify(inputString):
    returnString = ""

    for character in inputString:
        try:
            character.encode("ascii")
            returnString += character
        except UnicodeEncodeError:
            replaced = unidecode(str(character))
            if replaced != '':
                returnString += replaced
            else:
                try:
                     returnString += "[" + unicodedata.name(character) + "]"
                except ValueError:
                     returnString += "[x]"

    return returnString

Basically it first tries to find the most appropriate ascii representation, if that fails it tries using the unicode name, and if even that fails it simply replaces it with some simple marker.

For example Taking this string:

abcdšeđfčgžhÅiØjÆk 可爱!!!!!!!!

And running the function:

string = u'abcdšeđfčgžhÅiØjÆk \u53ef\u7231!!!!!!!!\U0001f60d\U0001f60d\U0001f60d\U0001f60d\U0001f60d\U0001f60d\U0001f60d\U0001f61d'
print(deEmojify(string))

Will produce the following result:

abcdsedfcgzhAiOjAEk[x] Ke Ai !!!!!!!![SMILING FACE WITH HEART-SHAPED EYES][SMILING FACE WITH HEART-SHAPED EYES][SMILING FACE WITH HEART-SHAPED EYES][SMILING FACE WITH HEART-SHAPED EYES][SMILING FACE WITH HEART-SHAPED EYES][SMILING FACE WITH HEART-SHAPED EYES][SMILING FACE WITH HEART-SHAPED EYES][FACE WITH STUCK-OUT TONGUE AND TIGHTLY-CLOSED EYES]

Try this

import unicodedata
print( unicodedata.name(u'\U0001f60d'))

result is

SMILING FACE WITH HEART-SHAPED EYES