A name is a label for a thing, person, 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 name for a specific unique and identifiable individual living being (including animals, pluralities, or ethnic groups), is sometimes called a proper name and is a proper noun. Other nouns are sometimes, more loosely, called names; an older term for them, now obsolete is general name.

The use of personal names is not unique to humans. Dolphins also use symbolic names, as has been shown by recent research. Individual dolphins have individual whistles, to which they will respond even when there is no other information to clarify which dolphin is being referred to.

Use of names

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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 it refers to.

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 several 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.

Kinds of names

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• A common name is a name for a plant or animal in a locale's native language, often describing the item's appearance. For example, "buttercup" might describe several unrelated plants with small yellow flowers in different parts of the world. There are millions of possible objects that can be described in science, too many to create common names for every one. Common names are also poorly suited to the precise usage needed by scientists, since by their nature common names evolve through linguistic processes. As a response, a number of systems of systematic names have been created. An example of a systematic naming scheme is Linnaean taxonomy, which uses Latin names for plants and animals.
• A personal name is a proper name attached to a person, such as a given name or a family name. It is universal for a person to have a name.
• An identifier is another word for a name, used in technical jargon, and generally refers to a name that is unique within a certain namespace.

Philosophical accounts of names

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Proper names function in 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 we recognized two aspects to the meaning of a name (and, by extension, other nouns): a sense, which is equivalent to some sort of description, and a referent, the thing or things that meet that description. So the sense of dog might be "domestic canine mammal", and the referent would be all the dogs in this world. Proper names would then be special cases of nouns with only one referent: the sense of Aristotle might be, "the author of de Caelo", while its referent would be the one person, Aristotle himself. (See Sense and Reference.)

Bertrand Russell rejected Frege's position, and claimed instead that true names must never be equivalent to a description. However, he conceded that most of the apparent "names" in English really were equivalent to descriptions, specifically to definite descriptions. (These are descriptions which contain the claim that they apply to only one object: see Theory of descriptions.) If there were any real names they probably were more like "this" and "that". This position is perhaps more fairly glossed as the view that there are two different functions nouns can serve: (1) describing (and perhaps indirectly referring); and (2) referring (directly, without description); and that all or almost 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.

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 their objects independently of any properties those objects have. Of course, we must often use descriptions to pick out our references--to explain to others which object we are talking about, by reference to some property we both agree it bears; but it does not follow that any of these 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 descriptions we associate with them, but because of the causal history of our acquisition of that name in our vocabulary.

Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet

In Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet, Juliet says (speaking about Romeo, because of the tension between their families),

'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 word would smell as sweet;

Shakespeare is revealing the boundaries of the term name here. He proposes that a rose would still be a rose; in another words, the name does not matter. However, at the same time he is showing us the importance of names, as for one thing - the names are what the plot is about.

Whitman's Mannahatta

In the first three lines of Walt Whitman's poem, Mannahatta, Whitman conveys a large amount of information about names.

I was asking for something specific and perfect for my city,

Whereupon, lo! upsprang the aboriginal name!

Now I see what there is in a name, a word, liquid, sane, unruly, musical, self-sufficient;

Here, he is saying that the name Mannahatta (or, Manhattan) is the perfect name for such a city, because it is so descriptive of its true essence. Whitman shows the importance and effect of proper naming.

Names in religious thought

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Judaism

Names are attributed added significance in traditional Jewish sources.

Biblical names

In the Old Testament, we find that names of individuals are meaningful. Adam is named after the "earth" (Adama) 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)

Talmudic attitudes

The Babylonian Talmud maintains that names exert an influence over their bearers:

From where do we know that a name has a causal effect ("shama garim"). Says Rabbi Elazar: the verse says, (Psalms 46:9) "Go see the works of God, who puts desolation (shamot) in the earth." Read not "desolation" but "names" (shemot). (B.T. Berachot 7b)

Futhermore, a change of name is one of four actions that can avert an evil heavenly decree. (B.T. Rosh Hashana 16b)

Commentators differ as to whether this influence is metaphysical - a connection between name and essence - or psychological. (See Meiri, Ritva to B.T. Rosh Hashana 16b)

Talmudic sage, Rabbi Meir, would infer a person's nature from his or her name. The Talmud also states that all those who descend to Gehennom will rise, except for three, including he who calls another by a derisive nickname. (B.T. Yoma 83b; J.T. Rosh Hashana 3:9; B.T. Yoma 38a; B.T. Bava Metzia 58a)

Mystical approaches

Mystical sources see the bible as a string of Divine Names with which God created the universe.

The Sefer Hagilgulim (Book of Reincarnations) says that parents are endowed with a form of prophecy. This allows them to choose an appropriate name for their child, a name that will reflect the soul of the child.

Technical names for names

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A human name is an anthroponym; a toponym is a place name; hydronym is a name of a body of water; an ethnonym is name of an ethnic group. For more, see a list of -onym words. There are also false names, such as monikers, pseudonyms, and pen names, the latter usually used only in writing.

Naming convention

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For Wikipedia's own naming conventions see Naming conventions

A naming convention is an attempt to systematize names in a field so they unambiguously convey similar information in a similar manner.

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.
• 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.

Products may follow a naming convention. Automobiles typically have a binomial name, a "make" (manufacturer) and a "model", in addition to a model year, such as a 2006 Nissan 350Z. Sometimes there is a name for the car's "decoration level" as well: e.g., Jaguar XJ6 Vandenplas, after the name of a carrosier. Computers often have increasing numbers in their names to signify the next generation.

Courses at schools typically follow a naming convention: an abbreviation for the subject area and then a number ordered by increasing level of difficulty.

Many numbers (e.g. bank accounts, government IDs, credit cards, etc) are not random but have an internal structure and convention. Virtually all organizations that assign names or numbers will follow some convention in generating these identifiers. Airline flight numbers, Space shuttle flight numbers, even phone numbers all have an internal convention.

Animal use of names

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Recently, research has demonstrated a long-speculated concept in animal communication - that at least one species other than humans uses symbolic, personal, names. At present this has been identified only in dolphins, who use whistling communication to convey information including the equivalent of personal names. The names are specific to individuals, who will respond even when voice, speaker, inflection and other cues are removed from the sound.[http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/edinburgh_and_east/4750471.stm.

See also

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• List of peoples
• List of adjectival forms of place names
• List of celebrities who have changed their name
• Most popular given names
• List of unusual personal names
• Names given to the divine
• Name at birth
• Names of God
• Number names
• Placename etymology
• Posthumous name
• Regnal name
• Temple name
• Unique identifier
• Unisex name
• Dutch name
• Persian names
• Short forms of American names

External links

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• Special Dictionary Names - large collection of given names with similar name links for each name, usage/origins and meaning sorted by gender and alphabetically.
• The Significance of Names in Jewish Thought
• Popular Dog Names
• Social Security Administration Popular Baby Names
• Baby Articles Top ten UK new baby names - 2005

Names | Parts of speech | Identifiers

Name | Nomo | Nombre | Nom | 名前 | Ime | Naam | Noum | nome (denominação) | Имя | Name | ime | Nimi | Namn | Ім'я | 名稱