ABSTRACT
John Stuart Mill thought that proper names denote objects and do not connote attributes. He concluded that proper names have “strictly speaking, no signification”. Modern Millians mostly agree with Mill and also make claims that go beyond Mill. Empty names raise significant problems for Millianism. Millianism entails that proper names that fail to refer have no semantic content. Artifactual Millianism is one option for Millians, but Millianism is consistent with other views about the nature of imaginary objects. Millianism says that the semantic content of a proper name is the object to which it refers. Millianism is consistent with the view that all putatively empty names from fiction, myth, and mistaken scientific theory refer to something. Millians typically use sets, or something like sets, to represent propositions. A Millian who accepts gappy propositions can reasonably maintain that ‘that’-clauses that contain empty names refer to gappy propositions.
