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The specific status of the general noun chose between lexicon and grammar is irrefutable today. This noun is used rather as a means of building cohesion, a support noun or a placeholder, and thus its function is similar to that of pronouns. From a strictly logical point of view, general nouns referring to humans, such as personne, are situated on a much lower level of generalisation. Nevertheless, certain properties of these nouns testify to a similar tendency. The aim of this paper is to show the heterogeneity of these nouns. A survey based on considerations of acceptability judgments in several languages reveals a division between lexical general nouns for humans – not very frequent items, associated with a specialised field and well-integrated into lexical networks – and the class of high-frequency general nouns for humans, which are detached from lexical networks. The semantic information provided by these nouns tends to be minimised. They act as a support for quantification and modification and can, under certain conditions, take the place of indefinite pronouns.