The semantics and pragmatics of names and naming

Since at least the time of Apollonius Dyscolus (The syntax of Apollonius Dyscolus, Benjamins, Amsterdam, 1981), On Syntax I: 78 it has been recognized that proper names express idia poiotēs literally “individual quality”, loosely “a unique identifier”. But on closer inspection they do more. I do not subscribe to the check-list account of proper names of Frege (Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik 100:25–50, 1892), Russell (Mind 14:479–493, 1905), Searle (Mind 67:166–173, 1958), Strawson (Individuals: an essay on descriptive metaphysics, Methuen, London, 1959), preferring the Kripke (Semantics of natural language, Reidel, Dordrecht, 253–355, 1972) notion of the name as rigid designator. I argue that proper names need to be included in a lexicon because they have certain lexical properties. Proper names for animates typically indicate the gender of the referent (cf. Searle in Mind 67:166–173, 1958), which is why transgender folk usually change their forename, and why John washed herself sounds anomalous/ungrammatical. Moreover, names often indicate the ethnic origin of the referent, compare the names Agyeman, Chen, Cohen, Françoise, Giancarlo, Kwame, Lyudmila, Mei, Nguyen, Papadopoulos, Shevardnadze, Tomiko, Wojciech. Although it is often claimed that names uniquely identify, they only do so in limited contexts: There are numerous individuals named Jesus or Elizabeth Taylor. Names are linked with roles (not merely gender roles): Robert Zimmerman may name the same person as Bob Dylan, but it was only the latter that is properly the creator of ‘Blowin’ in the Wind’. It is Marilyn Monroe and not Norma Jeane Mortenson who appeared in ‘Gentlemen Prefer Blondes’. A man may be Bill to his friends but William as a legal person. Names may vary across languages: London = Londres,  = Shevardnadze. Names vary across-time: Byzantion ⇒ Kōnstantinoupolis ⇒ Kostantiniyye ⇒ İstanbul. Naming, Kripke’s ‘baptism’, is influenced by the role of the name-bearer in a certain spatio-temporal context. There is semantic content to a name but there is also pragmatic (encyclopaedic) information that cannot be ignored, cf. My boss is a little Hitler. I extend the discussion to all kinds of names, proper names, natural kind names, common names. I propose a way to manage all these characteristics of names, beginning with the suggestion that lexicon entries supply one means of access to encyclopaedia entries, and that the lexicon forms a part of an encyclopaedia.