Names and Conceptual Domains

A name is typically given to an entity whilst keeping in mind which class this entity belongs to, which kind it is an instance of. It is usually recognized by philosophers of language that there thus exists a connection between a name and a general categorial term which classifies its referent, but the consequences of this connection for the semantics of names have largely been left unexplored. The paper proposes that, in the mind, names are connected to conceptual domains (which can be labelled by sortals) that encode the conceptualization of the kind of entity that the name names and that govern the behavior of the name. A domain is understood in cognitive linguistics as a coherent region of human knowledge, or a coherent region of conceptual space. That this connection exists is also testified to by experimental work on names. Examples with names of people, cities and literary works show how a name can shift its reference from the named entity as a whole to certain aspects of it in accordance with the structure of the background domain. Some aspects of an entity are usually conceived of as more essential to it than others, and this is exhibited in the behavior of the name. Previous work has shown that there is a certain appropriateness to naming, in the sense that there is something wrong with naming your daughter 'John', or 'Fido'. However, the paper attempts to uncover a deeper phenomenon: the use of names indicates how we conceive of entities, it reveals our background ontologies, so to speak, because the background domains govern the use of names.