What word would denote a person who connects a person to another person who has the same needs, situation or struggles? example: Cathy is a good _________. Cathy introduced Jan and Sarah to each other because Jan and Sarah both have similar medical conditions for instance or both live in the same neighborhood for example.
Learn English – What word would denote a person who connects a person to another person who has the same needs, situation or struggles
single-word-requests
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Best Answer
The general term for someone who specializes in matching supply and demand is a broker.
This is how OED puts it:
In other words, this is the famous "middleman" in "cut out the middleman".
Origins
The etymology of broker derives from Old French broceur "small trader". The earlier etymology is uncertain, but Etymonline speculates it's possibly from Old French brocheor meaning "wine retailer", which comes from the verb brochier, or "to broach (a keg)". In other words, a trader who finds people who make wine and people who drink wine and facilitates transactions between the two.
But of course, brokerage, or intermediation, is older than wine, and is a very varied field. The general impetus behind the rise of middlemen is that suppliers specialize in creating the good or service, and consumers desire the good or service in order to meet some other end, but neither supplier nor consume specialize in searching for counterparties, and often don't have the time or will to put into the search themselves. Thus they trade capital for time and outsource the work.
Names
Given these facts, the role of broker, or middleman, has independently arisen in an enormous variety of contexts, and therefore has been given an enormous variety of names. Some of these might suit your need better than others.
Of course, there are the obvious examples of specific intermediary specialities whose name is simply "-broker" modified by the appropriate attributive noun:
etc, but there are also a variety of different kinds of brokers whose titles and role don't include the word "broker" at all:
Filling in the blank
You say:
Given the foregoing, and the amazing variety of terms for specific kinds of brokers in the world, the specific label you choose for Cathy will depend on Cathy's reasons for introducing Jan and Sarah.
If Cathy thinks they'd make a good couple, she might be a matchmaker. If Sarah runs a company and Jan would be a good fit for an open position, Cathy would be a recruiter. And so on.
But the key element is Cathy is engaging in brokerage, by whatever name, so the word you're seeking will be some specialized hyponym of broker. If you want to keep it generic and not comment on the reason Cathy is making the introduction, they you can stay with the more general broker or intermediary.
¹ Or sometimes, post the 1964 musical fiddler on the roof, a yenta.
² But this is nuanced and evolving linguistic territory, which I'm not qualified to make statements about, so I'll just quote Prof. David K. Jordan of UC San Diego on the topic: