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Proper names are singular terms that refer uniquely to their referents in virtue of being bestowed upon and attached to these referents. Consequently, they are available to use over an extended length of time because they continue to refer to an individual even when that individual undergoes a descriptive change. Common names, on the other hand, denote a class of individuals and are applied to specific individuals on the basis of descriptions. If an individual’s description changes, many common names that were once attributed to the individual may no longer apply to that individual. As such, proper names are intimately tied to the identity of an individual in a way that a common name is not, which is why in many cultures the proper name is “considered to be part of, or identical with, the soul, self, or personality of its bearer” (Bean 310-1). What then does having a proper name suggest about the individual that bears it? To answer, I will focus on the conditions under which an individual has a proper name by looking at two broad accounts: one that focuses on the utility of proper names and another that uses proper names to convey significance. Using examples and empirical studies, I will conclude that a version of the significance account is correct. In particular, I will argue that an individual has a proper name iff (i) a social community has bestowed that individual with a name and accepted that name as referring to that individual, (ii) there is a continued interest in the identity of the individual over time, (iii) the individual has intrinsic or sentimental value and has had that value affirmed by the community, and (iv) the individual has (or is treated as having) a personality.
In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke addresses two questions: first, why do we not give proper names to all individuals, and second, why do we give proper names to the individuals that we do so name? To answer the first, Locke proposes that giving proper names to all individuals is psychologically impossible because it is beyond the capacity of the human mind to remember so many uniquely referring terms (Locke, chp. 3, sec. 2). As such, we must limit the number of individuals to which we assign proper names. Second, a unique reference for all individuals would be “useless” since it wouldn’t serve the chief end of language, which is the communication of thoughts to others (Locke, chp. 3, sec. 3). There would be too many proper names to keep track of, not all of which are known to the members of a conversation. One would have to resort to common names to continue the conversation and so relying completely on proper names would be useless and inefficient.
Already in Locke, we can see two purposes in using proper names. In accordance with the first response, we use proper names only for individuals that are special in some way, whose cognitive priority rises above other properly unnamed individuals and so deserves some of our limited cognitive capacity. In accordance with the second response, proper names provide an efficient means of communication in circumstances in which all members of a conversation know of the individual to which the proper name refers. Instead of having to repeat a description using common names, one can simply use a proper name to pick out the unique individual relevant to the conversation, thus making the conversation more efficient and more precise.
Though related, these two responses are different. The second response asserts that proper names are used to “single out an individual from all other individuals” while the first response asserts that proper names are used to “to mark off an individual’s individuality” (Jeshion 372). In other words, the second response claims that proper names simply help us to pick out and refer to a particular individual. On the contrary, the first response states that proper names stress the importance or significance of the individual so named. The second proposed understanding of proper names is what Jeshion calls the Semantic Utility Account of Proper Names whereas the first proposed view is called the Significance of Names Account.
Which of these two accounts is correct? The Semantic Utility account of proper names claims that we give proper names to certain individuals in situations where there is: (1) a wide circle of communicators that wishes to refer to a particular individual, (2) these communicators have “an interest in the continuing identity of the particular across time”, and (3) no short description exists that the group of communicators can use to pick out the individual uniquely (Jeshion 372). In sum, a proper name is given for the fundamental reason that it “will be useful for the purposes of efficient, economical communication” (Jeshion 376).
This view does have an initial plausibility. People, for example, meet each of the three criteria. An individual person must move through a wide circle of communicators that all have an interest in that person’s identity over time. Furthermore, given the complexity of what persons are, there is usually no short unique description that can pick out one person from another. Most artifacts, on the other hand, fail at least one of the three criteria, if not all three. For example, a particular basketball only needs to be referred to by a small circle of communicators (e.g., a family or group of friends), there is little interest in the continuing identity of the ball (since one basketball is generally as good as any other), and there is a short description available to pick out the ball (e.g., Fred’s basketball).
However, there are several objections that can be made that show that the Semantic Utility account of proper names does not provide necessary and sufficient conditions for when a proper name is given. More specifically, both conditions (1) and (3) are not necessary. We can easily imagine cases in which there is a very small circle of communicators that wishes to refer to a particular individual and does so using a proper name even though a short description is available for use (Jeshion 377). For example, our family pets are given names even though a short description would suffice (e.g., “the dog”, “the brown dog”, “Tom’s dog”). Similarly, there may be a very wide circle of communicators that wishes to refer to a particular individual but a proper name is not used even though a short description does not exist (Jeshion 378). For example, collector’s items are discussed amongst a wide variety of collectors but they are not given proper names even though their descriptions can be quite long and complex.
Condition (2), however, is met in these examples and so it does appear to be necessary. This is plausible since we would not assign a proper name to an individual whose identity held no long-term interest for us. However, this condition is not sufficient on its own. There are many individuals whose identity we have a long-term interest in maintaining over time but that we do not properly name. For instance, most people do not name their cars or their houses even though their continued identity is of great interest to their owners.
The difficulty with (2), and the Semantic Utility account as a whole, is that it does not specify what kind of interest we have in the individual’s continued identity. This is something that the Significance of Names account does not fail to do. According to Jeshion, our interest in the properly named individual is concerned with that individual’s individuality. We give proper names to individuals that “we construe as possessing individuality [and which] we regard as having intrinsic or relational value, beyond their value as an instance of a certain kind” (Jeshion 373). Bean similarly states that individuals are given names when they are “considered so unique or significant in their own right as to be distinguished and individuated” (Bean 309).
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