People & Body is the largest group in the standard. It holds gestures, professions, family units and body parts — everything that puts a person, or a piece of one, into a message. EmojiAll lists 394 symbols here, each with its Unicode name, code point and usage notes.

What you will find in this group

The group ranges from single hands and gestures to full family combinations. Gesture symbols such as the thumbs-up, the folded hands or the raised hand replace short sentences, while profession symbols name a role in one character.

Family and couple entries are built by combining a base symbol with modifiers, so one code point can stand for several people. That is why this group contains far more entries than the number of drawings suggests.

Gestures and what they mean

Hand gestures are the most culture-dependent part of the set. A thumbs-up is approval in most places, but a few gestures that look neutral can carry a very different meaning elsewhere, so it is worth checking before using one with an unfamiliar audience.

Body-part symbols are safer: an ear, an eye or a foot means what it shows. They are common in instructions, medical notes and descriptions.

Professions and representation

Profession entries were added later than the original set and now cover a wide range of roles. Most are gender-neutral by default, with variants available where the standard defines them.

When you only need the activity and not the person, the neutral entry is usually the better choice. It keeps the message focused on what someone does rather than on who they are.

Cross-platform notes

Combined entries such as families depend on font support. If a system is old, it may show the pieces separately instead of as one picture.

Skin-tone modifiers are applied as separate code points. They change the appearance without changing the meaning, and they are ignored by systems that do not support them.

How to copy and paste these emoji

All 394 symbols in People & Body can be copied straight from the cards on this page. Emoji copy and paste here is plain text, so the character you copy is the character that lands in Slack, WhatsApp, Notion, Word or X.

Copying from a desktop browser works the same way: select the symbol, or press the copy button, then paste into whichever app has focus.

Frequently Asked Questions

QWhy are there so many entries in this group?: Because many symbols are built from combinations. A profession, a family unit or a gesture with a skin tone is a separate code point sequence even when the drawing looks similar to another entry.
QDo skin tones change the meaning?: No. A skin-tone modifier only changes how the symbol is drawn. The Unicode name, the keywords and the meaning stay the same.
QWhich gesture should I avoid?: Anything whose meaning depends on local habit. If you are writing to someone in a country you do not know well, prefer gestures that simply depict an action, such as waving or clapping.
QCan I copy these symbols into code or documents?: Yes. Every page on EmojiAll gives the code point, the HTML entity and the decimal entity, so you can paste the character itself or reference it by number.