To make any smilies, hit the little line at the left of the window in which you are typing your new post that says Smilies Legend - it shows you that if you type, for example "colon closed-parentheses" you get (I had to spell out what to type, but the smilies legend just shows it to you quite clearly.

I suspect you cannot use Smilies in naming a new topic, probably just a decision by the people who make the software to keep the list of topics simple to read, though I will check that with Paul.