Vulcan Salute

The 🖖 Vulcan Salute emoji belongs to the open-hand gestures, filed by Unicode under People & Body. In practice it comes up around finger, hand, hands and salute. Further official keywords are vulcan.

🖖 fits messaging apps, social networks and anywhere a short visual cue helps. On SmileyZone it is filed under Gestures and Hands. Added in 2015 with Emoji 1.0, it displays correctly on every up-to-date system. Its code point is U+1F596. The emoji also comes in 5 skin tone variants, listed in the sidebar.

• 🖖 works as a one-character reply when finger is the subject.
• Fits messages about finger, hand, hands and salute.
• Often seen near ✋ Raised Hand, ✋🏻 Raised Hand: Light Skin Tone and 🖖🏻 Vulcan Salute: Light Skin Tone.

The Vulcan salute from Star Trek was not invented for the show. Leonard Nimoy took it from the Jewish priestly blessing: during Birkat Kohanim, the Kohanim form the letter shin with both hands – the initial of Shaddai, a name of God. Nimoy had seen it as a child in synagogue.

A religious hand position thus became, by a roundabout route, one of pop culture’s best-known signs.

• 🖖🫳 – Vulcan Salute and Palm Down Hand
• 🖖✋ – Vulcan Salute with Raised Hand
• 🖖🖐️ – Vulcan Salute plus Hand with Fingers Splayed
• 🖖🤚 – Vulcan Salute and Raised Back of Hand
• 🖖🫱 – Vulcan Salute with Rightwards Hand
• 🖖🫲 – Vulcan Salute plus Leftwards Hand

Easy to mix up with ✋ Raised Hand, ✋🏻 Raised Hand: Light Skin Tone or 🖖🏻 Vulcan Salute: Light Skin Tone. They sit in the same Unicode subgroup and look similar at small sizes, so it is worth checking the name before sending.