PROPER NAMES: A LINGUISTIC AND PHILOSOPHIC APPROACH

Abstract

Proper names are different designations of particulars such as people, places etc; this poses the problem of determining their meaningfulness. It has been argued by the ‘Millians’ that proper names must denote a referent without necessarily conferring any attribute to it and that the meaningfulness of proper names is their referents. On the other hand, the descriptionists such as Russell holds that the meaning of a proper name is also its referent which is the description given to it and that this description is logically equivalent with the proper name. Frege contends that the meaning of a proper name is the sense it communicates; reason is that some proper names can have more than one referent, thus, calls for the understanding of the sense they convey in a given context. Against this background, Kripke advanced a ‘casual theory of name’ which asserts that the meaning/referent of a name is fixed through the process of ‘initial baptism’ whereupon the name becomes a rigid designator of that object and meaning. The foregoing underscores the problematics of proper name, that is, their meaningfulness and referential nature. In view of this, the paper first looks at the linguistic concerns of proper names ranging from their nature and then, to their lexicological concerns. In relation to the meaningfulness and referential concerns of proper names, the paper examines the possible implications of some of the arguments advanced so far in this regard and concludes that: since semantic rules are not binding on the references of proper names, it simply underscores the fact that reference/referent/meaning of proper names is determined by the pragmatic intentionality of the speaker which does not necessarily imply lawlessness but establishes the dynamism of the use of proper names in contexts.