NAMES. 45 



from the importance of adhering to analogy, as for the 

 other reasons formerly assigned) a connotative name 

 ought to be considered a name of all the various indi- 

 viduals which it is predicable of, or in other words 

 denotes, and not of what it connotes. But by learning 

 what things it is a name of, we do not learn the 

 meaning of the name : for to the same thing we may, 

 with equal propriety, apply many names, not equiva- 

 lent in meaning. Thus, I call a certain man by the 

 name Sophroniscus : I call him by another name, 

 The father of Socrates. Both these are names of the 

 same individual, but their meaning is altogether 

 different ; they are applied to that individual for two 

 different purposes ; the one, merely to distinguish 

 him from other persons who are spoken of; the other, 

 to indicate a fact relating to him, the fact that 

 Socrates was his son. I further apply to him these 

 other expressions : a man, a Greek, an Athenian, a 

 sculptor, an old man, an honest man, a brave man. 

 All these are names of Sophroniscus, not indeed of him 

 alone, but of him and each of an indefinite number of 

 other human beings. Each of these names is applied 

 to Sophroniscus for a different reason, and by each 

 whoever understands its meaning is apprised of a dis- 

 tinct fact or number of facts concerning him; but 

 those who knew nothing about the names except that 

 they were applicable to Sophroniscus, would be alto- 

 gether ignorant of their meaning. It is even conceiv- 

 able that I might know every single individual of 

 whom a given name could be with truth affirmed, 

 and yet could not be said to know the meaning of the 

 name. A child knows who are its brothers and 

 sisters, long before it has any definite conception of 

 the nature of the facts which are involved in the 

 signification of those words. 



