person: light skin tone
Unicode: 1F9D1 1F3FB
Description
An emoji representing a person with a light skin tone. This is a base human emoji used with various modifiers to denote specific professions or characteristics.
Group:
People & Body > person
Status:
fully-qualified
Emotion:
Neutral, or reflects the emotion conveyed by specific combination emojis it forms (e.g., if combined with a doctor emoji, it might convey care or health).
Backstory
The base 'person' emoji (1F9D1) was introduced in Unicode 10.0 (2017). The skin tone modifier (1F3FB, light skin tone) was introduced earlier to allow for diverse representation of human emojis, building on the Fitzpatrick scale. These two code points together create a specific skin tone for the general human emoji.
Usage Examples
- As a default for any person: "I saw a 🧑🏻 walking by."
- Combined with other emojis to specify: "He is a 🧑🏻🔬 (scientist)." or "She is a 🧑🏻💻 (coder)."
- To represent a generic individual in a sentence: "Every 🧑🏻 has their own story."
Cultural Differences
Western culture:
Frequently used as a generic representation of 'person' or as a building block for more complex human emojis.
East Asian culture:
Generally used in the same way as a generic human representation, often combined with other emojis to signify a specific role or action.