ABSTRACT
The way in which objects and people are named often reveals much about both the named and the person that did the naming. The study of names, onomastics, has some bearing on the naming of angels. Philosophers and logicians have questioned the relationship between the etymology of a name and the name itself. John Stuart Mill, for example, believed that proper names only alluded to a meaning, but had no meaning in and of themselves.1 Mill argues that whilst a name such as Dartmouth, etymologically means ‘at the mouth of the River Dart’, in actuality people do not really understand the name in the context of etymology, but just consider it to be the name of a particular place. Essentially, Dartmouth is just Dartmouth. Others, such as Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell,2 believe that names ‘stand in’ for more complicated concepts: so a name like Westminster is ‘shorthand’ for the more convoluted ‘area in central London on the north bank of the Thames’. In the context of angelic nomenclature, it is important to consider the relationship between the name and the angel: is the name incidental or a sign of a more important concept? Does a name mean anything, or is it just a purely arbitrary name?
