The word 他人 is formed by directly combining two meaningful characters: 他 (tā), which means "other" or "another", and 人 (rén), which means "person" or "people". The concept is constructed by placing the idea of "otherness" in front of the core idea of "person", thereby creating a composite notion that explicitly refers to people who are distinct from oneself or from a specified or implied group (like "us" or "them"). It is a straightforward, logical fusion where the first character descriptively qualifies the second, drawing a conceptual boundary between the self and the rest of humanity.