The use of personal names is not unique to humans. Dolphins also use symbolic names, as has been shown by recent research. Individual dolphins have individual whistles, to which they will respond even when there is no other information to clarify which dolphin is being referred to.

Naming is the process of assigning a particular word or phrase to a particular object or property. This can be quite deliberate or a natural process that occurs in the flow of life as some phenomenon comes to the attention of the users of a language. Many new words or phrases come into existence during translation as attempts are made to express concepts from one language in another.Many of these names have meanings that can also be very helpful during this process.

Either as a part of the naming process, or later as usage is observed and studied by lexicographers, the word can be defined by a description of the pattern to which it refers.

Besides their grammatical function, names can have additional or pure honorary and memorial values. For example, the posthumous name's primary function is commemorative.

Care must be taken in translation, for there are ways that one language may prefer one type of name over another. For example, there are "merchants' and sailors' terms" for their own convenience: the spellings Leghorn, Genoa, and Rome do not appear on Italian maps. Also, a feudal naming habit is used sometimes in other languages: the French often refer to Aristotle as "le Stagirite" from one spelling of his place of birth, and English speakers often refer to Shakespeare as "The Bard", recognizing him as a paragon writer of the language. Finally, claims to preference or authority can be refuted: the British did not refer to Louis-Napoleon as Napoleon III during his rule.

Romeo and Juliet

In the play Romeo and Juliet, Juliet famously says:

'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;

Russell

main: Theory of descriptions Bertrand Russell believed that true names must never be equivalent to a description, but conceded that most of the apparent "names" in English really were equivalent to descriptions, specifically to definite descriptions. In this position, there are two different functions nouns can serve: