The individual identification apparatus is provided for comparing a target pattern of an arbitrary person with a recorded reference pattern of a specific person, thereby judging whether the arbitrary person is the specific person. The apparatus has a calculation processing portion 60. In order to previously record a pattern of the specific person as a reference pattern, the portion 60 calculates correlations between the pattern of the specific person and comparative patterns which belong to other people. The portion 60 records the pattern of the specific person as a reference pattern only when the correlations between the pattern of the specific person and the comparative patterns are equal to or lower than a threshold. The portion 60 refuses to record, as a reference pattern, such a pattern that provides high correlations with regards to the other people's patterns and therefore that has a high similarity with regards to the other people's patterns. There is a small possibility that the apparatus will erroneously judge a match between an arbitrary person and the specific person when the arbitrary person is different from the specific person.