A functional theory of proper names: Insights from quasi-proper names
Yoko Mizuta · Intercultural Pragmatics · 2025
Abstract This paper aims to shed new light on proper names from a functional perspective, based on the insights obtained from the investigations on quasi-proper names. I provide a relational table model of the facts about naming acts and name-bearing relations. It represents the information in a simple, flexible fashion, while accommodating the difference in the status of a person’s name, such as legal names, stage names, and baptismal names, as well as the situation of name-sharing. On this basis, I propose a functional theory of proper names, which systematically explains the meaning and usages of proper names, in terms of different views of the above-mentioned two-dimensional, relational table.