Personoi

Personoi is a term that appears in a few scholarly and linguistic contexts as a plural form related to persons, faces, or imagined characters. It is not a standard entry in major reference works and may reflect a transliteration variant or a niche coinage used by particular authors. In many discussions, the canonical Greek plural prosopoi (πρόσωποι) means “faces” or “figures” and is used when referring to masks, portraits, or character roles in classical drama and philosophy. Some writers adopt personoi as an anglicized plural to denote multiple personal entities or personas in cross-cultural or cross-linguistic analyses.

In usage, personoi can appear in analyses of theatre to denote the array of characters represented on stage, or in rhetorical study where a persona stands for an authorial voice or a rhetorical mask. In philosophy and theology, scholars discussing personal identity or agency might employ the term to refer to multiple persons without committing to a single linguistic tradition, treating personoi as a flexible surrogate for persons, characters, or selves.

Notes and cautions: because personoi is not a widely standardized term, its meaning is highly context-dependent and can vary between authors. When encountering it, readers should check the surrounding text for how the author defines the term and whether it is intended as a Greek-influenced plural, a substitute for personae, or a device-specific label.

See also: Persona, Prosopopoeia, Prosopography, Prosopon, Mask (theatre).