Definition
Things personal are all property other than real property — encompassing movable, tangible goods and the personal rights and profits that relate to them. The category stands in direct opposition to things real (real property), and together the two divisions exhaust the traditional common law classification of property.
At common law, things personal were defined as goods, money, and all other movables that may attend the owner's person wherever the owner chooses to go, together with such rights and profits as relate to movables. This dual strand — physical objects plus related intangible rights — is important. The category is not limited to things you can pick up and carry; it extends to choses in action, contract rights, and profits that arise from or attach to movable property.
In modern usage, personal property is the operative term. Things personal is the classical common law phrasing, now primarily encountered in historical texts, treatises rooted in Blackstone, and older equity and probate materials.
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Common Language
Modern common usage (Wiktionary): "Personal" in ordinary English means relating to or belonging to a particular person; individual, private, or concerning one's body or self.
Historical common usage (Webster's 1913): "Personal" — of or pertaining to a particular person; relating to an individual; applied to a thing which may affect or characterize a given person.
The ordinary English sense of "personal" suggests a connection to a specific individual. The legal sense is categorical, not individual — things personal are a class of property defined by mobility and the absence of attachment to land, not by any particular person's identity. A mountain of coal, a ship at sea, or a stock certificate are all things personal. A cottage nailed to a foundation is not, even though it may be intensely "personal" to its owner in the everyday sense.
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Common Confusion
THINGS PERSONAL vs. THINGS REAL: The distinction tracks movability, not importance or value. A $50 million art collection is things personal. A $10,000 strip of land is things real. Researchers working in historical probate, succession, and equity materials must be alert to this because the legal consequences differed sharply — rules of intestacy, formal execution requirements for wills, and the treatment of decedent's debts often applied differently to real and personal property. Treating these as rough synonyms for "important" and "unimportant" property will produce error.
THINGS PERSONAL vs. CHATTELS: Chattels is a narrower common law term typically applied to tangible movable objects (chattels personal) or to certain limited interests in land (chattels real). Things personal is the broader category, encompassing not just chattels but also choses in action and other intangible rights related to movables. Conflating the two collapses a distinction that older courts and treatise writers maintained carefully.
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Recognized Forms
/SUBTYPES
Chattels personal: Tangible movable goods — the physical objects most people picture when they think of personal property.
Choses in action: Intangible personal rights enforceable only through legal action, such as contract rights, debts, and negotiable instruments. Historically a contested subcategory; early common law did not permit assignment of choses in action, and this limitation generated substantial doctrinal development.
Choses in possession: Personal property presently in the owner's physical possession or control — the complement to choses in action.
Rights and profits relating to movables: The extension recognized in Stephen's Commentaries (1 Steph. Comm. 156), capturing intangible benefits that arise from or are measured by movable property without being the movable object itself.
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Why It Matters in Research
The phrase things personal appears throughout historical legal literature as the organizing term for what modern lawyers call personal property. Researchers who encounter it in older equity reports, chancery proceedings, probate records, and eighteenth- or nineteenth-century treatises should understand that the term is doing heavy structural work — it invokes an entire body of doctrine about succession, creditors' rights, conflict of laws, and remedies.
Watch for the following navigational traps:
First, the choice-of-law rule. At common law, things personal were governed by the law of the owner's domicile (the lex domicilii), while things real were governed by the law of the situs (where the land lay). This produced different outcomes for the same decedent's estate depending on the classification of individual assets. Historical cases frequently turn on whether an item was properly characterized as real or personal.
Second, intestate succession. The rules of descent for real property and the rules of distribution for personal property were historically distinct, often running to different heirs. A document that says an heir "inherited" something without specifying which body of rules applied may be ambiguous in a way that requires classification of the property.
Third, the expansion of the intangible category. The definition in Stephen's Commentaries — adding rights and profits as relate to movables — reflects an ongoing doctrinal expansion that modern intellectual property law continues. Researchers tracing the history of intellectual property as personal property will find things personal to be the ancestral category. The Law Mind Property Law Encyclopedia entry on intellectual property as personal property is the direct descendant of this lineage.
Fourth, defense-of-property doctrine in tort. The distinction between real and personal property surfaces in the rules governing how much force an owner may use to defend against interference. The Law Mind Torts & Personal Injury Encyclopedia entry on defense of property (real and personal) addresses this directly and should be consulted alongside property classification issues.
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Historical Dictionary Support
All three source dictionaries — Black's, Bouvier's, and Burrill's — reproduce substantially identical language tracing to Blackstone's Commentaries (2 Bl. Comm. 16): goods, money, and all other movables that may attend the owner's person wherever the owner thinks proper to go. This convergence on Blackstone signals that the historical dictionaries are transmitting an authoritative classical formulation rather than synthesizing independent doctrinal development.
Burrill and Black both add the expansion from Stephen's Commentaries (1 Steph. Comm. 156), which broadens the definition to include rights and profits relating to movables. Bouvier stops at the Blackstone formulation and does not incorporate Stephen's extension — a gap worth noting because the intangible rights strand is significant for any research touching on contract rights, debts, or commercial paper as personal property.
None of the historical dictionaries meaningfully address the choice-of-law implications, the distinction between choses in action and choses in possession, or the treatment of things personal in the conflict of laws — areas where a researcher relying solely on these entries would be underequipped. The entries function as definitional anchors, not doctrinal guides.
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Jurisdictional Note
The real/personal property distinction is universally recognized across American jurisdictions, though statutory reforms to intestate succession and creditors' rights have substantially reduced the practical divergence in outcomes between the two categories. In Louisiana, civil law roots produce a different underlying classification scheme (movables and immovables), and researchers working in Louisiana materials should not assume common law things personal doctrine maps cleanly onto Louisiana property concepts.
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Encyclopedia Cross-Reference
The Law Mind Property Law Encyclopedia — Personal Property: Intellectual Property as Personal Property (Overview)
The Law Mind Torts & Personal Injury Encyclopedia — Intentional Torts: Defense of Property (Real and Personal)
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