person [ME] When first used in English person meant ‘a role or character assumed in real life or in a play’ as well as ‘an individual human being’. The first sense has largely been taken over by persona, which came directly in the mid 18th century from the source of person, Latin persona ‘actor’s mask, character in a play’, and also ‘human being’. The Latin term was also used by Christian writers as a term for the rector of a parish, what we would now call a parson [ME]. From the same source come impersonate [E17th] originally meaning ‘personify’, and personnel [E19th] from French and which still keeps the original stress on the final syllable normal in French.