Name
A name (etymology: from Old English nama; akin to Old High German namo, Latin nomen, and Greek όνομα) is a label for a human or animal, thing, place, product (as in a brand name) and even an idea or concept, normally used to distinguish one from another. Names can identify a class or category of things, or a single thing, either uniquely, or within a given context. A personal name identifies a specific unique and identifiable individual person. The name of a specific entity is sometimes called a proper name (although that term has a philosophical meaning also) and is a proper noun. Other nouns are sometimes, more loosely, called names; an older term for them, now obsolete, is "general name".
Naming is the process of assigning a particular word or phrase to a particular object or property. This can be quite deliberate or a natural process that occurs in the flow of life as some phenomenon comes to the attention of the users of a language. Many new words or phrases come into existence during translation as attempts are made to express concepts from one language in another.
Either as a part of the naming process, or later as usage is observed and studied by lexicographers, the word can be defined by a description of the pattern to which it refers.
Besides their grammatical function, names can have additional or pure honorary and memorial values. For example, the posthumous name's primary function is commemorative.
Care must be taken in translation, for there are ways that one language may prefer one type of name over another. For example, there are "merchants' and sailors' terms" for their own convenience: the spellings Leghorn, Genoa, and Rome do not appear on Italian maps. Also, a feudal naming habit is used sometimes in other languages: the French often refer to Aristotle as "le Stagirite" from one spelling of his place of birth. Finally, claims to preference or authority can be refuted: the British did not refer to Louis-Napoleon as Napoleon III during his rule.
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Philosophical accounts of names
Romeo and Juliet
In the play Romeo and Juliet, Juliet famously says:
'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
It has been argued that Shakespeare reveals the boundaries of the term name by proposing that a rose would smell sweet regardless of what we call it; therefore suggesting that a name attached to a person should not change them.
Frege
Proper names function the same way as common nouns do in many natural languages. Philosophers have thus often treated the two as similar in meaning. In the late nineteenth century, Frege argued that certain puzzling features of both names and nouns could be resolved if two aspects of the meanings of names and nouns could be recognized, sense and reference:
- A sense, which is equivalent to some sort of description (a dog is a 'domestic canine animal')
- A referent, the thing or things that meet that description (all dogs in the world)
Proper names are in this sense, special cases of nouns with only one referent, the person themselves.
Russell
Bertrand Russell believed that true names must never be equivalent to a description, but conceded that most of the apparent "names" in English really were equivalent to descriptions, specifically to definite descriptions. In this position, there are two different functions nouns can serve:
- Describing (and perhaps indirectly referring)
- Referring (directly, without description)
Russell's position is that that most or all English names really do the former. This position came to be known as Descriptivism with respect to singular terms, and was prominent through much of twentieth-century analytic philosophy.
Kripke
In 1970 Saul Kripke gave a series of lectures arguing against Descriptivism, and holding, among other things, that names are rigid designators, expressions that refer to objects independently of any properties those objects have. However, often descriptions are used to pick out references, to explain to others which objects are being discussed by reference to an agreed-upon property. According to this theory, it does not follow that any of the agreed-upon properties constitute the meaning of the name.
Kripke's work led to the development of various versions of the Causal theory of reference, which in various forms claims that our words mean what they do, not because of associated descriptions, but because of the causal history of the acquisition of that name in a vocabulary.
In religious thought
In the ancient world, particularly in the ancient near-east (Israel / Palestine, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Persia) names were thought to be extremely powerful and to act, in some ways, as a separate manifestation of a person or deity. This viewpoint is responsible both for the reluctance to use the proper name of God in Hebrew writing or speech, as well as the common understanding in ancient magic that magical rituals had to be carried out "in someone's name". By invoking a god or spirit by name, one was thought to be able to summon that spirit's power for some kind of miracle or magic (see Luke 9:49, in which the disciples claim to have seen a man driving out demons using the name of Jesus.) This understanding passed into later religious tradition, for example the stipulation in Catholic exorcism that the demon cannot be expelled until the exorcist has forced it to give up its name, at which point the name may be used in a stern command which will drive the demon away.
Judaism
Names are attributed added significance in traditional Jewish sources.
Biblical names
In the Old Testament, the names of individuals are meaningful; for example, Adam is named after the "earth" (Adam) from which he was created. (Genesis 2)
A change of name indicates a change of status. For example, the patriarch "Abram" is renamed "Abraham" before he is blessed with children. His wife, "Sarai" is similarly renamed "Sarah." (Genesis 17)
Throughout the Bible, characters are given names at birth that reflect something of significance or describe the course of their lives. For example: Solomon meant peace, and the king with that name was the first whose reign was without warfare. Likewise, Joseph named his firstborn son Manasseh (Hebrew: "causing to forget") as a gesture of forgiveness to his brothers for selling him into slavery.
Hebrews did not have a surname which was passed from generation to generation. However, they were typically known as the child of their father. For example: David, son of Jesse. In a sense, they used their fathers' first names as their own last names, a practice done by most Muslims today.
Talmudic attitudes
The Babylonian Talmud maintains that names exert a mystical influence over their bearers, and a change of name is one of four actions that can avert an evil heavenly decree, that would lead to punishment after one's death. Rabbinical commentators differ as to whether the name's influence is metaphysical, connecting a person to their soul, or bio-socio-psychological, where the connection affects his personality, appearance and social capacities. The Talmud also states that all those who descend to Gehenna will rise in the time of Messiah. However, there are three exceptions, one of which is he who calls another by a derisive nickname.
Technical names for names
| Name of a... | Name of name |
|---|---|
| Person | Anthroponym |
| Place | Toponym |
| Body of water | Hydronym |
| Ethnic group | Ethnonym |
| False name | Pseudonym |
| Author writing under an assumed name | Pen name or pseudonym |
| Other names | -onym-suffixed words. |
Naming convention
Several major naming conventions include:
- In computer programming, identifier naming conventions
- In computer networking, computer naming schemes
- In the sciences, systematic names for a variety of things
- In astronomy, planetary nomenclature
- In classics, Roman naming conventions
Naming conventions are useful in many aspects of everyday life, enabling the casual user to understand larger structures.
Street names within a city may follow a naming convention; some examples include:
- In Manhattan, roads that go across the island (East-West) are called "Streets", while those that run the length of the island (North-South) are called "Avenues". Manhattan streets and avenues are numbered, with "1st Street" being near the southern end of the island, and "219th Street" being near the northern end, while "1st Avenue" is near the eastern edge of the island and "12th Avenue" near the western edge.
- In Ontario, numbered concession roads are East-West whereas "lines" are North-South routes.
- In San Francisco at least three series of parallel streets are alphabetically named, e.g. Irving, Judah, Kirkham, Lawton, Moraga, Noriega, Ortega, Pacheco, Quintara, Rivera, Santiago, Taraval, Ulloa, Vicente, Wawona.
- The same tendency is seen in central Boston, Massachusetts, where Arlington Street is followed by roads to the west running parallel to it and named Berkeley, Clarendon, Dartmouth, Exeter, Fairfield, Gloucester, and Hereford.
- In Brampton, Ontario, different sections of town all have streets starting with the same letter and the alphabetical order reflects chronology.
- In Phoenix, Arizona, roads east of Central Avenue are termed streets while those west are Avenues.
Large corporate, university, or government campuses may follow a naming convention for rooms within the buildings to help orient tenants and visitors.
Parents may follow a naming convention when selecting names for their children. Some have chosen alphabetical names by birth order. In some East Asian cultures, it is common for one syllable in a two syllable given name to be a generation name which is the same for immediate siblings. In many cultures it is common for the son to be named after the father. In other cultures, the name may include the place of residence. Roman naming convention denotes social rank.
See also
License
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Name".
