 When we speak of remaining the same person or of becoming a different one, we mean remaining or ceasing to be a certain sort of person. For someone no longer to be the same person is for her still to exist, but to have changed in some important way. This has to do with her individual identity in the sense of the characterization question—with what sorts of changes would count as losing the properties that define someone as a person. It has nothing to do with persistence. Asking what it takes for someone to “retain her personal identity”, or to lose it, also appears to be about characterization rather than persistence.