"A proper name [is] a word that answers the purpose of showing what thing it is that we are talking about" writes John Stuart Mill in A System of Logic (1. ii. 5.), "but not of telling anything about it". The problem of defining proper names, and of explaining their meaning, is one of the most recalcitrant in modern philosophy. Image File history File links Acap. ... In linguistics, a noun or noun substantive is a lexical category which is defined in terms of how its members combine with other grammatical kinds of expressions. ... John Stuart Mill (20 May 1806 – 8 May 1873), British philosopher, political economist civil servant, and Member of Parliament, was an influential liberal thinker of the 19th century. ...

The problem of proper names

Mill's definition is as good as any, though it is ultimately not helpful.^{[neutrality disputed]} A proper name tells us which thing is in question, without giving us any other information about it. But how does it do this? What exactly is the nature of this information? There are two puzzles in particular:

1. The name in some way reveals the identity of the object. An identity statement, such as "Hesperus = Phosphorus" should contain no information at all. If we understand the names, we should understand the information they carry, namely the identity of their bearers, and if we grasp their identity, we should understand automatically whether the statement is true or false. Thus the statement should not be informative. Yet it is. The discovery that Hesperus = Phosphorus was (in its day) a great scientific achievement.
2. Empty names seem perfectly meaningful. Then whose identity do they reveal? If the only semantic function of a name is to tell us which individual a proposition is about, how can it tell us this when there is no such individual?

In Greek mythology, Hesperos (Greek (The Evening Star), sometimes Latinized as Hesperus) and (H)eosphoros (Morning Star) Latinized as Eosphorus (see Lucifer) are sons of the dawn goddess Eos (Roman Aurora). ... General Name, Symbol, Number phosphorus, P, 15 Chemical series nonmetals Group, Period, Block 15, 3, p Appearance waxy white/ red/ black/ colorless Standard atomic weight 30. ... In the philosophy of language, an empty name is a proper name that has no referent. ...

Theories of proper names

Many theories have been proposed about proper names, none of them entirely satisfactory.

=== to the senses.

Descriptive theory

The descriptive theory of proper names is the view that the meaning of a given use of a proper name is a set of properties that can be expressed as a description that picks out an object that satisfies the description. It is commonly held that Frege held such a view — the description being embedded in what he called the sense (Sinn) of the name. Certainly, Russell^[clarify] seems to have espoused such a view in his early philosophical career (Sainsbury, R.M., Russell, London 1979). A definite description is a denoting phrase in the form of the X where X is a noun-phrase or a singular common noun. ... The distinction between Sinn and Bedeutung (usually but not always translated sense and reference, respectively) was an innovation of the German philosopher and mathematician Gottlob Frege in his 1892 paper Ãœber Sinn und Bedeutung (On Sense and Reference), which is still widely read today. ...

So, according to the descriptivist theory of meaning, there's a description of the sense of proper names, and that description, like a definition, picks out the bearer of the name. The distinction between the embedded description and the bearer itself is similar to that between the extension and the intension of a general term, or between connotation and denotation. The distinction between connotation and denotation is commonly associated with the philosopher John Stuart Mill, though it is much older. ...

The extension of a general term like "dog" is just all the dogs that are out there; the extension is what the word can be used to refer to. The intension of a general term is basically a description of what all dogs have in common; it's what the definition expresses.

The difficulty with the descriptive theory is what the description corresponds to. It must be some essential characteristic of the bearer, otherwise we could use the name to deny the bearer had such a characteristic. The objection is associated with Kripke, although philosophers such as Bradley, Locke and Aristotle had already noticed the problem. Saul Kripke in 1983 Saul Aaron Kripke (b. ... In English The meaning of the name Bradley is: Broad clearing in the wood. ... For other persons named John Locke, see John Locke (disambiguation). ... Aristotle (Greek: Aristotélēs) (384 BC – 322 BC) was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. ...

Referential theory

Causal theory of names

The causal theory of names combines the referential view with the idea that the name's referent is fixed by a baptismal act, whereupon the name becomes a rigid designator of the referent. Subsequent uses of the name succeed in referring to the referent by being linked by a causal chain to that original baptismal act. (The theory is an attempt to explain exactly why a proper name has the referent that it actually does). A causal theory of proper names is any of a family of views about what kind of meaning a proper name (or proper noun) has, what object it refers to, and how it acquires these features. ... In modal logic and the philosophy of language, a term is said to be a rigid designator when it picks out the same thing in all possible worlds in which that thing exists (and picks out nothing in those possible worlds in which it does not exist). ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article may require cleanup. ...

See also

• Singular term
• Personal name