Synonyms for People

What can I say ... I love making lists.  This one is a collection of the different Chinese characters that can be used to refer to people.  As with my other lists, the real value comes from learning the word combinations that can be formed with each character.  Note that some of the synonyms carry other meanings, but I only mention these if they are relevant to the theme of this collection.

This collection doesn't include the numerous words Chinese has for naming relatives, such as 媽 (mother), 爸 (father), 姑 (father's sister), 舅 (mother's brother) ... there are dozens of these and so they really deserve their own list.

人 - person

者  - person, always attached to a verb and can be interpreted as "one who does..."

民  - civilian, usually identifies a person as a member of a larger group

家 - professional

員 - staff, member

匠 - craftsman

東 - owner, host

長 - literally 'senior', refers to someone in charge of a team or institution

主 - literally 'main, primary', also master or leader

師 - teacher, master

手 - literally 'hand', implies a low-level occupation or manual labor

徒 - disciple, follower

夫 - literally 'husband', refers to a man in an agricultural occupation

戶 - literally 'door leaf, household', used also to refer to a customer

裁 - literally 'to cut or tailor', for some reason also appears in these two words:

匪 - bandit

鬼 - literally 'ghost, demon', used as a derogatory term when referring to a person

miscellaneous

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