Raising Hands Emoji

Two open hands raised in the air with motion lines above them. It's the emoji equivalent of throwing your arms up and going "YES!" Some people read it as a high five. Others read it as praise hands. Both are valid, but the original intent is closer to the Japanese banzai (万歳) gesture: arms raised in celebration while shouting "ten thousand years!" The full Unicode name is PERSON RAISING BOTH HANDS IN CELEBRATIONPERSON RAISING BOTH HANDS IN CELEBRATION.

🙌 covers a wide emotional range. It can mean "we did it," "thank god," "hallelujah," "finally," or just "YESSS." The common thread is relief or triumph. You don't send 🙌 at the start of something. You send it when something you were waiting for finally happens.

On Slack, 🙌 (shortcode :raised_hands::raised_hands:) has become one of the most common positive reactions, functioning as a "thank you" or "great job" in #wins channels and deployment announcements. It carries more weight than 👏 because it implies personal investment in the outcome.

🙌 is a celebration finisher. It shows up after the good news lands, not before. On Twitter/X, it pairs with announcements: promotions, launches, personal wins. "Got the keys to my first apartment 🙌" or "SHE SAID YES 🙌" are the classic formats.

On Slack and Teams, it's the second-most common positive reaction after 🎉. Slack's own blog lists it as a simple "thank you" reaction. When a colleague shares that they closed a deal, shipped a feature, or resolved an outage, 🙌 says "I was rooting for this and it happened." Lighter than writing a congratulatory message, heavier than a 👍.

In religious contexts, 🙌 doubles as praise hands. Christian social media uses it alongside worship lyrics and scripture. "God is good 🙌" is a genre of tweet. This dual meaning (secular celebration vs. spiritual praise) is why the emoji reads differently depending on who's sending it.

On TikTok and Instagram, it's common in fitness win posts, academic achievement reveals, and "finally" moments. Less common in aesthetic caption culture because it's too energetic for the vibe-based emoji sets.

🙌 comes directly from the Japanese banzai (万歳) gesture. Banzai literally means "ten thousand years" (万 = ten thousand, 歳 = years), and the tradition involves raising both arms straight up while shouting the word three times. It's used at weddings, election victories, sports wins, and national celebrations across Japan. The gesture dates back centuries, with roots in Classical Chinese court protocol where "wànsuì" (万岁) was a wish for the emperor's long life.

When Japanese mobile carriers built their original emoji sets in the late 1990s and early 2000s, the banzai gesture was a natural inclusion. On some carriers, the emoji was actually animated, showing hands moving upward in the banzai motion. When Unicode standardized it in version 6.0 (2010) as U+1F64CU+1F64C PERSON RAISING BOTH HANDS IN CELEBRATION, the animation was frozen at the top of the gesture, which is why we see two static raised hands with motion lines suggesting they just went up.

The transition from Japanese banzai to Western "praise hands" happened organically. American users saw raised palms and mapped them onto two existing Western gestures: the "give me ten" high five and the Pentecostal raised-hands worship posture. Neither was the original intent, but both readings stuck. Today, Dictionary.com lists celebration, high five, praise, and "hooray" as standard interpretations.

Part of Unicode 6.0 (2010) as U+1F64CU+1F64C PERSON RAISING BOTH HANDS IN CELEBRATION. Added to Emoji 1.0 in 2015. Part of the People & Body category, hands subcategory. CLDR short name: "raising hands." Keywords: celebration, gesture, hand, hooray, raised.

1. 1999Japanese mobile carriers include banzai gesture emoji in original emoji sets, some versions animated
2. 2010Standardized in Unicode 6.0 as U+1F64C PERSON RAISING BOTH HANDS IN CELEBRATION↗
3. 2015Added to Emoji 1.0, skin tone modifiers introduced

In Japan, 🙌 reads as banzai (万歳), the traditional victory shout. At New Year's celebrations, election results, and baseball games, Japanese people raise both arms and chant "banzai" three times. The gesture is deeply embedded in the culture and the emoji is used accordingly.

In the United States and Europe, it reads as a celebration or high five. The religious "praise hands" interpretation is strongest in evangelical and Pentecostal Christian communities, where raising hands during worship is a physical act of surrender to God.

In Korean (만세/mansé), the same word and gesture exist with similar meaning, borrowed from the same Classical Chinese root. The March 1st Movement (삼일운동, 1919), when Koreans demonstrated for independence from Japanese rule, is literally called the "Mansé Movement" because protesters raised their hands while chanting it.

The emoji doesn't carry risk across cultures the way 👍 or 👌 do. Raised hands in celebration or prayer are universally readable as positive.

• •The full Unicode name is PERSON RAISING BOTH HANDS IN CELEBRATIONPERSON RAISING BOTH HANDS IN CELEBRATION. At 46 characters, it's one of the longest official emoji names in the entire Unicode set.
• •🙌 originated from the banzai (万歳) gesture in Japanese culture. The word means "ten thousand years" and the gesture involves raising both arms while chanting it three times. It's been part of Japanese celebrations since at least the Meiji era.
• •Korean has the same word and gesture: 만세 (mansé), from the same Classical Chinese root. The March 1st Movement (1919), Korea's independence demonstration against Japanese rule, is called the "Mansé Movement" because protesters raised their hands while chanting it.
• •Some early Japanese carrier emoji versions of 🙌 were animated, showing the hands actually moving upward. When Unicode standardized it as a static image, the motion lines were added to imply the movement that was lost.
• •On Slack, 🙌 (:raised_hands::raised_hands:) is among the most popular positive reactions. Slack's own blog describes it as a simple "thank you" reaction, one of the most common uses in workplace channels.
• •There is no dedicated "high five" emoji in Unicode. 🙌 is the closest candidate (two palms facing outward) but it officially represents one person raising their own hands. The 🙏 folded hands are even further from a high five, showing a single pair of hands pressed together.
• •The pose is about 1,800 years older than banzai. Roman catacomb frescoes from the 2nd century CE show Christian figures standing in the same arms-up, palms-forward posture, called oransorans ("one who is praying"). Early Church Fathers read the shape as a silhouette of Christ on the cross, which is part of why the gesture stuck in Western worship.
• •The biblical anchor for raised-hands worship is 1 Timothy 2:8: "I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands." The verse, written around 65 CE, is why Pentecostal and charismatic churches defend the posture as scriptural. It's also why "God is good 🙌" feels natural as a tweet format: it's a 2,000-year-old visual argument compressed into one glyph.
• •The same gesture means "6 points" in American football. NFL referees raise both arms straight overhead to signal a touchdown, a signal that evolved around 1910 and standardized after a 1929 Syracuse-Cornell game when radio broadcasters asked referee Elwood Geiges to come up with visible signs. So in a US sports bar on Sunday afternoon, 🙌 is literally the scoreboard.
• •The Mexican Wave didn't start in Mexico. Professional cheerleader Krazy George Henderson coordinated the first documented wave at an Oakland A's playoff game on October 15, 1981). It got the "Mexican" tag only because the 1986 FIFA World Cup in Mexico broadcast it to a worldwide audience. The wave is essentially 🙌 scaled to stadium size.
• •Black American praise breaks have a direct Kongo lineage). The ring shout, where enslaved Africans shuffled counter-clockwise with arms raised, merged with Christian worship in the 18th century and became the template for the praise break: organ stabs, fast footwork, and arms up. When megachurch worship leaders raise their hands today, they are continuing a tradition that predates Pentecostalism by more than a century.
• •🙌 ranked #4 in celebration posts across Meta platforms in 2023, behind 🎉, ❤️, and 🥳. 😭 overtook 😂 as the overall most-used emoji in 2024, but 🙌 kept its spot in the celebration-specific top five.
• •About 54% of tweets containing a skin-tone-eligible emoji apply a modifier, and on 🙌 the medium-dark (🏾) and dark (🏿) modifiers overindex relative to population share, largely because the gospel-praise use case is concentrated in Black American digital spaces where self-representation via skin tone is close to the norm, not an edge case.
• •In Japan, the phrase banzai sanshobanzai sansho (万歳三唱, "banzai three chants") is the formal version of the ritual. You see it at election night party headquarters, weddings, and the dissolution of parliament, where legislators literally stand up, shout banzai three times, and rush out to campaign. The emoji freezes the top of that third chant.

• •Sending 🙌 in response to sad news. Even if you're trying to be optimistic ("things will get better 🙌"), the celebration energy doesn't match grief or disappointment. Use ❤️ or 🫂 instead.
• •Using 🙌 when you mean 🙏. If you're expressing gratitude or making a request, 🙏 is the right choice. 🙌 is for triumph. Saying "please help me 🙌" sends mixed signals.
• •Overusing 🙌 on Slack for routine updates. When everything gets 🙌, nothing feels celebrated. Reserve it for real wins.

• •🙌 represents the Japanese banzai (万歳) gesture. The full Unicode name is "Person Raising Both Hands in Celebration," one of the longest official emoji names at 46 characters.
• •On Slack, :raised_hands::raised_hands: (🙌) is one of the most common celebration reactions. Slack's own blog describes it as a concise "thank you" or "great job."
• •The Korean March 1st Movement (1919), called the "Mansé Movement," featured protesters raising both hands while chanting the Korean equivalent of banzai.

• •U+1F64CU+1F64C. Supports skin tone modifiers (U+1F64CU+1F64C + U+1F3FBU+1F3FB through U+1F3FFU+1F3FF).
• •On Slack: :raised_hands::raised_hands:. On GitHub: :raised_hands::raised_hands:. On Discord: :raised_hands::raised_hands:.
• •If building a celebration or achievement feature (badges, milestones, deployment notifications), 🙌 is the most natural emoji to pair with it. More specific than 🎉, more personal than 👏.
• •Skin tone rendering varies by platform. Some show two distinct hands (Apple), others show them as more connected (Google). Test on target platforms.

See the full Emoji Developer Tools guide for regex patterns, encoding helpers, and more.