"Names are a big deal in the philosophy of language. Gottlob Frege taught philosophers about sense and reference with "Hesperus" and "Phosphorus." Bertrand Russell used names to demonstrate how the surface form of a sentence can differ radically from its logical form. And Saul Kripke used observations about names to motivate theses in modal metaphysics. Names are a big deal outside of philosophy, too. We don new names to symbolically mark changes in self-identity (due to marriage or religious conversion, etc.)."
"Yet these two areas of concern-the philosophical import of names, and the import of names to everyday life-may appear largely disjoint. Nothing in Naming and Necessity, for instance, readily explains why two people might join their last names when they get married-or indeed why Kripke's parents would name him "Saul" and not "Paul." This is no criticism, of course-philosophers can, and often should, pursue theoretical aims that don't shed much light on everyday phenomena."
Names carry significant theoretical weight in the philosophy of language through debates about sense and reference, logical form, and modal semantics, as illustrated by Frege, Russell, and Kripke. Names likewise carry social importance for personal identity, parental choice, and cultural practices such as naming animals. Philosophical and everyday concerns about names can seem disconnected, since theoretical accounts do not straightforwardly explain practices like joining surnames at marriage or particular naming choices. Recent philosophical attention has focused on deadnames: names rejected because of gender transition. Deadnames prompt questions about the semantics and metasemantics of names and where to draw theoretical boundaries.
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