People(s) vs Person(s)

Both ‘peoples’ and ‘persons’ are accurate plurals of ‘people’. Yet ‘peoples’ seems like a plural to both these plurals. So it can seem confusing.

 

‘Person’ refers to a single individual human.

 

‘People’ refers to a group of humans, i.e. multiple humans, as a single unit. It could be generic, as in ‘people over there’. Or it could be a specific kind of group, such as nationality, ethnicity or religion.

 

‘Persons’ refers to multiple humans but not as a single unit, i.e. multiple people doing their own thing independently from one another.

 

‘Peoples’ refers to multiple people organised into multiple groups or, in other words, multiple groups of people. Indigenous humans as a whole are referred to as ‘indigenous peoples’ because, whilst they’re all indigenous, they are all members of their own separate groups. This can be applied to meetings where several different nationalities, ethnicities or religions are together.