Name of character combinations that show faces?

Solution 1:

Emoticon

An emotion icon, better known by the portmanteau emoticon (/ɨˈmoʊtɨkɒn/) is a metacommunicative pictorial representation of a facial expression that, in the absence of body language and prosody, serves to draw a receiver's attention to the tenor or temper of a sender's nominal verbal communication, changing and improving its interpretation. It expresses — usually by means of punctuation marks (though it can include numbers and letters) — a person's feelings or mood, though as emoticons have become more popular, some devices have provided stylized pictures that do not use punctuation.

;)

Solution 2:

This is an extra piece of information.

emoji are the picture icons. You are correct. And ":-)"-like faces are "Emoticons", as RexYuan answers.

Some of the other punctual faces are technically "dongers" or "kaomoji" depend on what characters they are made of. Dongers usually have thinner strokes like ᕙ༼ຈل͜ຈ༽ᕗ , while kaomoji characters are less gnarly e.g. (╯‵□′)╯.

Since the term "emoji" is better known, people might refer it to as dongers or kaomoji. It could be picky to argue the terminology under some circumstances.

Hope this helps.