The invention relates to the technical field of video monitoring, in particular to a character identity recognition method combining face recognition and human body recognition, which comprises the following steps: acquiring clear face images and human body images of passengers at a security check place, then receiving video frames in monitoring equipment in a waiting room, recognizing the face images in the video frames, and if the face recognition is successful, carrying out human body recognition, if a human body feature comparison score obtained through human body recognition is smaller than a clothes changing threshold value, determining that the passenger has a clothes changing behavior, and replacing the human body image corresponding to current successful face recognition with the old human body image of the current passenger; if the face recognition fails, carrying out human body recognition, sending out an alarm signal only when the human body recognition fails, and otherwise, not sending out the alarm signal. According to the method, the face recognition technology is combined with the pedestrian recognition technology, and the false alarm rate of character identity recognition in a non-cooperative scene is reduced. The method has the advantages that the false alarm rate can be reduced, and meanwhile the clothes changing behavior of the passenger can be recognized.