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I fear I may be venturing again into "just because" territory, but this one
bugs me.

We all know that you usually use いる (as in not ある) to refer to living things,
as in 私は日本にいる（△ある）. Yet it is acceptable to use ある in the sense of "some" when
the specifics are not important, so it's acceptable to say both ある日, for
example, as well as ある人. ある人はそう言った。

Is there a reason for this, or is it just an extension of that usage of ある (in
which case why isn't it いる人)?
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word-choice
Why is it (usually) wrong to say 人がある but OK to say ある人？
Historically I think it was OK to use ある with living things. This is because
in Chinese 有 (the origin of あり) does get used with living things.

In the modern Japanese grammar, ある in ある人 is called 連体詞, a word that modifies
a noun. At some point in time this evolved from a verb and several other forms
of words, but I think a different classification reflects the degree of the
divergence the modern form now has from the original verb form.

So I think it's probably more natural to think of ある in ある人 and ある as a verb
as two separate words.

Note that いる人 can be OK in some context, for example in 学校にいる人は帰りましょう (those
who are still in the school, please head home). Similarly, ある as verb can
sometimes be combined with 人 as a subject in some specific forms, such as
ここに人あり.
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i'd like to explain this as a Japanese.( im not sure my english is correct,
sorry about that) ある人 means ” a certain person" we dont use ある for people as
for existence. ある for things, いる for people. the two ある mentioned above are
not the same ある, i think.
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