Is the interaction between a proton and an electron, say in a hydrogen atom, considered to be a complex or a fundamental interaction? It would seem the underlying electromagnetic interaction is between the 3 quarks and the electron, making the proton-electron interaction complex. Does this sort of difference between fundamental and complex interactions make any sense?

The gauge bosons are called "particles", but is there a more perspicuous term available? (I used "disturbance in a field" above as a synonym, but not sure if this could be seriously misleading.) More to the point, can all elementary particles (fermions + bosons) be considered as "disturbances"?

Based on your description, is it reasonable to a first approximation for a neophyte to "visualize" each of the gauge bosons (plus the graviton) as localized quantum disturbances in 4 separate spatiotemporal overlapping fields: an electromagnetic field, a strong field, a weak field, and a gravitational field?

If I'm following you, each of the electron, muon, and tau possess their own (conserved) total lepton number before and after any interaction. Same for their neutrinos. As far as I can tell, this answers my original question. All elementary particles can be distinguished/classified in terms of discrete properties (as opposed to properties like mass or lifetime with continuous, real number, values). Unless you have further comment, thanks for your time to explain.

OK. So photons are differentiated from gluons by interaction type: electromagnetic vs strong. That leaves electron, muon, and tau (and their neutrinos). Interaction can't be used because they are all clasified as having electroweak interactions (in addition to having the same charge and spin). Any other distinguishing property (other than mass)?

Thanks for the discussion anna, although we're not quite connecting. As a particular case, can you briefly clarify how physicists formally (ie, in terms of specific properties) distinguish between gluons and photons? Since (from the table) they both have the same mass, charge, and spin; there must be some other relevant distinguishing property which is part of the formal Standard Model.

Perhaps my question is as much philosophical as physical. The table above seems to distinguish quarks by mass (which I was calling a continuous property) rather than only by charge or spin alone (discrete property values). Alternately, my physics text distinguishes all quarks & antiquarks in terms of only discrete properties: charge (+1/3,-1/3,+2/3,-2/3), baryon number (+1/3,-1/3), strangeness (+1,-1), charm (+1,-1), bottomness (+1,-1), and topness (+1,-1). These discrete properties seem able to classify all quark types, without reference to mass. But what about the rest of the table?