1.4 Names and naming.   Anything may have a name, as long as people have felt the need of designating the thing by an expression that names rather than specifies its characteristics. People are almost invariably named; indeed, a human being without a name would be socially and psychologically less than fully human. When the Hollywood Tarzan meets his mate, their first conversation establishes name: ‘Me Tarzan, you Jane.’ With that introduction, the ape-man becomes less ape and more man. Animals have names, provided they are pets or have otherwise individually captured human interest. When they do have names, they are typically personified, referred to by the pronouns who and he/she rather than which and it. Places are named, but only if they are of such interest to human beings that a proper way of designating them is thought fit. Mount Everest is named, but a Himalayan peak of medium height may not be.

Things of various kinds may also have names, always providing that they have been singled out as the objects of particular interest. Constellations have names often quite diverse; one group of stars whose unity is that they appear to observers on earth to be close to one another as well as to the North or Polar Star, is called Ursa Major, Charles’s Wain, the Plough, the Big Dipper, among other names. A clock may have a name, e.g., Big Ben in London, and so may a bell, e.g., the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. Houses may have names, especially if they are grand: Longleat in the UK, the White House in the US. In Britain in particular, private homes may be named in addition to or instead of having street numbers, because of location, e.g., Braeside: the side of a brae or hill, sometime use, e.g., The Barn, or an association which the owners wish to project, e.g., Ocho Rios, linking the owners with a town in Jamaica, or to indicate, often jocularly, the owners’ situation, e.g., Dunromin, a pseudo-Celtic name disguising ‘done roaming’, i.e., retired. A named residence often has, or is assumed to have, a social cachet. In North America, it is chiefly vacation homes that are named, often poetically and jocularly, e.g., Mountainview. Dew Drop Inn.

Ships, smaller boats, trains, cars, and bicycles can be named. Names for larger vehicles, particularly the names of popular routes of public transportation, are for convenience of reference, but may also be romantically evocative: the train routes known as the Orient Express (Paris-Istanbul), the Flying Scotsman (London-Edinburgh), the Frontier Mail (India: North-West Frontier-Delhi-Bombay). Names for smaller, personal vehicles are generally the result of imitation of the grander names and/or involve playful animism and personification: ‘Old Bess needs her valves ground, but then she’s 12 years old next month.’. Trees and rocks can be named: General Sherman is the name of a particularly old, large redwood tree in California; Pilgrims’ Rock is the point at which the Pilgrim Fathers are said to have stepped ashore from the Mayflower in 1620. Musical compositions, ballets, paintings, sculptures poems, plays novels, and other works of art have names that are referred to as titles.