Jackie states: This is exactly the way I feel about the Methodists going back through so many long-ago written hymns and replacing 'man' or 'men' with 'people', or some such. It offends my sensibilities.

Man is an old English word meaning human being. Person is an old Etruscan word meaning mask. People is also an old Etruscan word but the AHD doesn't say what it meant.

In the Ithaca Community Chorus one year we sang a bunch of Christmas carols, carefully removing all the "sexist" references (we couldn't figure out what to do with the "merry gentlemen" so we left that one out) and then gayly went on to sing a song about a little woperson who sat in the window drinking her rose petal tea while patiently waiting for her MAN to come home from the sea.