At this stage you might think it’s simply a matter of learning the correct name for each emoji, so you know how to start a search.
That is sadly not the case.
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Sorting is a challenge, so I don’t want to harp on here. But it does seem like an exact match of the Unicode name, CLDR name and Apple name should probably bring up that emoji in the top 10 at least.
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iOS emoji search is one of the top feature requests I see whenever Apple releases new emojis.
The thing is, this shouldn’t be a hard problem. Every emoji has an official name granted by Unicode, as well an official localized name that can be more user-friendly. Apple’s search should take those two labels, plus its own custom names, into account when searching. Right now, the entire system seems bad in random ways, and inconsistent across emoji characters.
You’re not dreaming. There used to be a gavel emoji on iOS. It didn’t get removed, it simply changed appearance. Yesterday’s gavel is today’s 🔨 Hammer.
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At the time of writing, Emojipedia contains every single emoji update from Apple, Google, Microsoft, Samsung, WhatsApp, Facebook, Twitter, LG, and HTC for the years 2008 to 2018.