On the Development of Referent Theory of Meaning

The referent theory of meaning,with meanings of words,especially names,as its researching core,is begun by Mill,which undergoes different stages of Frege-Russell's theory of proper name,Wittgenstein and Searle's theory of cluster description,and Kripke and Putnam's historical causal referent theory.The research of the theme has been divided into two basic schools,description theory of proper name and theory of causal reference,which have respectively responded to the problem whether there is any meaning in name positively and negatively.The article puts forward a constructive idea with conforming the two schools.