The present invention provides a method and an apparatus for determining an identity identifier of a face in a face image, and a terminal. The method includes: obtaining an original feature vector of a face image; selecting k candidate vectors from a face image database; selecting a matching vector of the original feature vector from the k candidate vectors; and determining, an identity identifier that is of the matching vector. In embodiments of the present invention, a face image database stores a medium-level feature vector formed by means of mutual interaction between a low-level face feature vector and autocorrelation and cross-correlation submatrices in a joint Bayesian probability matrix. The medium-level feature vector includes information about mutual interaction between the face feature vector and the autocorrelation and cross-correlation submatrices in the joint Bayesian probability matrix, so that efficiency and accuracy of facial recognition can be improved.