Definition
Personation is the act of representing oneself as another person — whether that person is living or dead, real or fictitious — typically for a fraudulent or unlawful purpose. The offense consists in assuming another's identity without authority and using that assumed identity to obtain some benefit, exercise a right belonging to another, or commit a legal act in another's name.
At common law, personation done for purposes of fraud was treated as a misdemeanor. Statute law has considerably expanded and sharpened the offense, creating felony-grade personation in contexts such as:
1. FALSE PERSONATION (PROPERTY/FINANCIAL): Assuming another's identity to obtain money, property, dividends, wages, or other financial benefits.
2. FALSE PERSONATION (ELECTORAL): Voting, or attempting to vote, in an election by impersonating a registered voter. This has been a distinct and seriously treated statutory offense in both English and American law.
3. FALSE PERSONATION (LEGAL PROCESS): Impersonating a party in a legal proceeding, signing legal instruments, or acting in an official capacity under another's name.
The term "false personation" is frequently used interchangeably with "personation" in both common law sources and statutory contexts. Modern American criminal codes more often use "criminal impersonation" or "identity fraud," but the substantive conduct described is the same.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): The act of personating — playing a role or portraying a character; also, specifically, the act of voting in an election by impersonating someone else.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): The act of personating, or counterfeiting the person or character of another.
The ordinary English sense includes entirely innocent conduct — theatrical performance, portraiture, and dramatic impersonation. The legal sense is narrower and purpose-driven: personation as a legal offense requires the assumption of another's identity with fraudulent, deceptive, or unauthorized intent. A stage actor personating a historical figure commits no legal wrong; a person claiming to be that figure to collect a pension does.
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Common Confusion
PERSONATION vs. IMPERSONATION: In modern usage, "impersonation" has largely displaced "personation" as the preferred term in American statutes and legal writing. The two terms describe identical conduct. Researchers encountering "personation" in older English and American sources should treat it as functionally equivalent to what modern codes call "criminal impersonation" or "false impersonation." The historical sources use "personation" and "false personation" almost exclusively; modern statutory indexes will list the offense under "impersonation."
PERSONATION vs. IDENTITY FRAUD/IDENTITY THEFT: Modern "identity theft" statutes are broader, typically encompassing the unauthorized use of another's identifying information for financial gain even without physically assuming the person's role. Personation historically required an active, transactional representation — claiming to be someone in a specific context — rather than mere misuse of credentials. The two concepts overlap substantially but are not identical, and older sources will not use "identity theft" terminology.
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Why It Matters in Research
Researchers will encounter this term almost exclusively in pre-twentieth-century English and American sources. Several navigational points are essential:
TERMINOLOGY SHIFT: After roughly the mid-twentieth century, American jurisdictions uniformly moved to "impersonation" in their statutory language. If you are researching criminal identity offenses in modern codes, search "impersonation," "criminal impersonation," or "identity fraud." If you are reading nineteenth-century treatises, reports, or digests, expect "personation" or "false personation."
ELECTORAL PERSONATION: This is a historically significant and well-developed sub-category. English electoral law treated personation at the polls as a serious felony well before equivalent American statutes developed. Researchers working on election law history — particularly the Corrupt Practices Acts in English law — will find extensive treatment of personation as a distinct electoral offense separate from general fraud.
FELONY/MISDEMEANOR DISTINCTION: The common law background (misdemeanor) versus statutory upgrade (felony in specific contexts) is important for understanding the grade of offense in any given historical source. Whether personation was charged as a misdemeanor or felony in a historical case often turns on the specific statutory framework in force at the time and jurisdiction.
SCOPE OF "FICTITIOUS PERSONS": Both Rapalje & Lawrence and historical statutes explicitly cover personation of fictitious as well as real persons. This matters in research on fraud schemes involving invented identities — the offense attaches even where no real individual was impersonated.
CORPUS CONNECTIONS: Personation intersects with fraud, forgery, and election law materials throughout the Law Mind corpus. Researchers tracing this term will benefit from cross-reading under "fraud," "false pretenses," and "forgery," as historical sources sometimes grouped these offenses together or treated their boundaries as contested.
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Historical Dictionary Support
Rapalje & Lawrence and Burrill approach the term from different angles that together give a useful complete picture. Rapalje & Lawrence leads with the practical legal content: common law misdemeanor status, statutory elevation to felony, and the key contexts (property, dividends, wages, elections). Burrill is more etymological and structural, defining personation as "the acting as a person, or for a person" and directing the reader to "False personation" — signaling that false personation was the operative legal term of art in the tradition Burrill was cataloguing.
The two sources agree on the core: personation is identity assumption, and its legal significance arises from its purpose and consequences, not from the act of representation alone.
What both historical sources understate is the jurisdictional fragmentation that characterized personation law. Different English statutes addressed personation in specific economic sectors — stock transfers, military service, civil service examinations — at different times, creating a patchwork that a single dictionary entry cannot fully map. Neither source engages with electoral personation at length despite its prominence in Victorian-era prosecutions.
Neither source anticipates the modern absorption of personation into the broader framework of identity theft and cybercrime, which represents the most significant substantive development in this area since their publication.
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Jurisdictional Note
English law developed personation as a distinct statutory offense earlier and more elaborately than American law, particularly in the electoral context. American jurisdictions codified the offense at varying times and with varying terminology; modern American statutes almost universally use "impersonation" rather than "personation." Canadian criminal law retains "personation" as the operative statutory term, making the older terminology still live in Canadian legal research.
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