ABSTRACT
John Stuart Mill regarded all definite noun phrases (NPs) as names, giving the place which the wisdom or policy of antiquity had destined for the residence of the Abyssinian princes as an example of a complex name (1843: 16). However, nowadays most people take the term “names” as equivalent to “proper names”—just NPs like Madonna and Barack Obama. Proper names have caused a lot of headaches for semanticians and philosophers of language, prompting David Kaplan to remark “if it weren’t for the problem of how to get the kids to come in for dinner, I’d be inclined to just junk them” (1978: 224). This chapter will try to make clear what the main problem with proper names is, what solutions have been proposed, and why none of those solutions has been universally adopted as the correct one.
