The article refers the terms of “person” and “character” (in French “personage”) to their etymology (persona). It questions the evidence that identifies “persons” and “people”, while shedding light on the part of truth in this partially inaccurate identification. It shows that “persona” as a theatrical mask gives these terms a double determination of sound and visibility. As a voice carrier, and as a means of making the role played by an actor known, the mask is primarily a means of communication. The problem of the relation between “person” and “character (personage)” is easily solved if we consider the person as a unique living being playing a multitude of roles on different social scenes. But as soon as you look at the use of these terms in different cultures, then their relation becomes complicated. “Person” most often corresponds to a status, which is recognized neither to all living beings (since are not often spoken of as persons), nor even to all human beings (since women, children, or slaves are often not called “persons”. From there, the difference between “persons” and people as living beings is sometimes pushed to the extreme, until the organic support of “persons” vanishes. Persons become simple labels or roles. From then on, persons are apprehended as characters playing various roles, and only a “conscience” can attest to a living individual, and therefore a person supporting the various characters he endorses. As some living beings and even some human beings are not capable of this attestation, the risk is that they are denied the rights attached to the status of the person. And if one separates consciousness from the conscious individual, then one could theoretically transfer this consciousness to other living individuals. This fiction allows to suppose various supports and various bodies for the same person as defined by consciousness. The stakes are ethical and political. It is about the recognition of human rights to persons, which raises the question of the criteria for recognition of the human being: human figure? rationality? ability to speak and address others? The delimitation of persons and other beings, their distinction from animals is due to decisions specific to different cultures, and to hierarchies internal to different societies. Faced with the skeptical fading of the evidence concerning what makes the human being, it is proposed to note that all human beings share stories, tales, narrations, images or paintings where various characters that, human, divine, animals or monsters, real or fictional, give an audible and visible form to living beings in the universe. It is perhaps this “character-form”, enveloping narratives and dialogues, that specify human life. Therefore, we have the responsibility to give their right place to non-humans on the earth that we share.