In many situation such as:
A) If friend tells you about someone else that it's not clear to you who is the person that your friend talks about.
B) Someone calls you and you do not know who is this person.
In some languages, the question will be translated into "Who is it?" using the pronoun it about a person(!). Is it the same in English, or should we say "who is he?"?
Best Answer
If you've got totally no idea who that person is, not even the gender, then you could say 'who was it?'. And also, for 'who was it', you can use it when your friend answered a phone call and then he hangs up the phone. Then, you ask him 'who was it?'
For situation A, since your friend is telling you about that person, you might ask 'who is he or she'
But, I don't think situation B makes any sense as you may just ask that person 'who are you?'.