In the ancient Egyptian language, the Nile is called Ḥꜥpy (Hapy) or Jtrw (Iteru), meaning "river". In Coptic, the word ⲫⲓⲁⲣⲟ, pronounced piaro (Sahidic) or phiaro (Bohairic), means "the river" (lit. p(h).iar-o "the-canal-great"), and comes from the same ancient name. [Wikipedia]
We begin by describing a classic language feature: the noun and the name. A noun typically is a type (see Plato's Forms) while a Name picks out a token, a particular instance of the type. We may call some animals "dogs" but "Shep" is a particular dog.
So the theory here (well established already) is that naming arises in community according to culture. We name what we use. Naturally the local river is just called "River" and the meaning of the specific name "river" is exactly the same as the type noun "river." because there is just one instance of this type so no one needs to separate them. When someone says "I'll meet you at the River" it means "river." Nouns and true names are exactly the same to start with.
It is like "sun" and "Sun" it is like sky and "Sky." We only have one sun and sky so the noun and Name are interchangeable.
Note however while for the Egyptians "River" is the same as "river" for people outside Egypt the river starts to gain other meaning "the great canal" suggesting there are lesser canals. And eventually these descriptions become a proper name "Nile" to distinguish this river from other rivers like "Tigris."
So we have initial naming which is a word that distinguishes the type of entity. And then as many examples of this type exist we get proper names.
"I'll meet you at the river" is in contrast to "I'll meet you by the mountain"
"I'll meet you at the River" is in contrast to "I'll meet you by the Lesser-River"
So like with all things its a mix of uses and meanings.
Naming is not description, but it is not essence either. It lies in distinguishing things, and the sorts of things we need to distinguish are fluid depending on what we need.
And so we might have a word for "slaves." And if all slaves are interchangeable then the owning people may not even give them names. "Get me two slaves to help carry things" is all that is needed.
However if we spend a lot of money on our slaves and which to account for this we will say "There are 200 Washington's slaves" meaning that George Washington has 200 slaves. These slaves are now called the "Washington slaves." They will become a problem for Washington in time as attitudes change. It might have been better not to name them.
So in human we have personal names. But this is again contextual. In olden times in the UK you could ride into a village and if your horse needed a new shoe you would stop in the pub and ask for the Blacksmith or Smith. People would tell you were Mr Blacksmith was and he would make and fit you a new horseshoe. Exactly like changing a car tyre today. So a family would become known as the Blacksmiths. And within that people would gain names say the sons John and Paul (good Christian names from the Bible - these are even called "Christian Names"). But this was only one of several names. Because the same person would also be known by the place they came from so if we moved from say Farningham to another village people would call us John of Farningham to distinguish us from other Johns. And if we were under a lordship we would gain their name to indicate who we belonged to. So we could be referred to by many names all of which reflected the social context we were being names, and all of them to distinguish us from other people in that context.
So there really is no essence. The world is being sliced and diced according to what is needed, and what entities need to be separated.
This is really noticeable when it comes to racial identity. I bet in Africa there was no name for "black person" and no one identified with being "black." Indeed it would just be skin colour. Languages probably had words for different shades as tribes intermingled. Some tribes would see they were very dark and some light. But one one thought they were "black." Being "black" literally was invented when black and white people come together. White people like black people never had such a word. But when black people turned up the skin colour was most notable by the different from European skin colour. Naturally they were called "Black" in English. Now I am "white" but I never see myself as white, this is not an identity that white people have, 99% of Europeans just see themselves as what they are and skin colour does not exist. But in high density foreign areas where Europeans are the minority then "white" starts to become something and an opposition to "Black." This is quite natural and is called racism. Likewise being minority in a foreign land people called "Black" felt the difference and named it "Black." So you have the absurdity of people with "African heritage" thinking they are "Black" not just a colour but as a mark of difference. It is really clear here how naming is invented on the back of cultural difference. Problem only occur when this difference is confused with the nonsense of "essence" people start to think it says something intrinsic. But all people are guilty of this especially those who think they are "Blacks." Governments weakly pandering to these essentialist differences are only reinforcing the illusions!
One of the most famous names in the West is "Jews". A history of the Jews shows how this name evolved to distinguish the 12 Israelite tribes from other tribes, and gradually become more and more rigid and defined by a series of relocations. The most significant was King Nebuchadnezzar II of the Babylonian empire destroying the First Temple and enslaving the tribes. But hidden in here is the founding myth of "Jew". What the Babylonians actually did was enslaved the people of Judah. There were hundreds of tribes in Judah not just Israelites, and people from hundreds of tribes were enslaved. The Babylonians did not see it as enslaving Jews, such an idea did not exist. But seen through the ideas of the nascent "Jews" since Judah was their kingdom, enslaving the kingdom was a direct attack on them. It is chicken and egg. If you racialise your kingdom, then anything that happens to it happens to your race. If you deify your car then anything that happens to it happens to your god. So very act of the Babylonians enslaving Judah gave the Israelites a chance for a particular meaning and distinction from other tribes that were enslaved. Judah employed people of all tribes and Judah was far more cosmopolitan than in the post-hoc Jewish retelling. After all the culture, gods and language of the land that became Judah was there long before Israelites or even Hebrews. But the Babylonian attack of Judah transformed into an attacked specifically on Israelites. This fundamentally cemented Jewish identity and meaning and led to the myths of persecution that are fundamental to keeping that identity alive. Note Jews don't define themselves internally, they define themselves through the threat from outside. That invented threat becomes the difference needed to invent the meaning of "Jew." This invention is no where more apparent than in the later Moses story. To continue the Jewish identity they needed a new enslavement and Egypt becomes the new "other." They actually fled to Egypt and were welcomed because Joseph had stored up grain to avert the famine. But the Jews took thoughtless liberties and began to multiply and threaten the native people (particularly problematic in a world of frequent famine) and so the Pharaoh reacted. However the myth of enslavement is not borne out in the Bible where Moses comes under intense criticism for leading them away from a land where they had business, ate well and lived freely. But to maintain the distinct Jewish identity there is always a need for persecution to give this defined borders. And that reveals exactly this theory of naming that it depends wholly upon difference and distinction.
This reaches its zenith in the absurdities of the Holocaust. The Germans started to notice the way that the Jews say themselves as different and that created a sense of German Identity. Hitler asks in "Mein Kampf" speaking of a Jew, "the question is not is this a Jew, but is this a German?" We can see the nonsense exploding here. Jews have defined themselves for 1000s of years on persecution. But that definition based on an "other" and on the "gentile" naturally makes the gentiles ask if you are so different from me, then what am I. Jews became the difference the Germans needed to have their own identity. But the greatest absurdity is that the Germans needed to solidify this difference first and they created a definition of Jew more precise than anything previously encoded in the "Nuremberg Rules." If the Jews wanted definition they now had it gold plated. But this gold plated definition was doubled edged and the Germans used it to remove the Jews, who to be fair would not have been unhappy at being seen as different from Germans.
This period of persecution cemented the name "Jew" into Western History, but importantly gave the Jews the essential and total definition they had been craving since the first tribal moves of the Israelites.
And yet in this theory we need remember that there is no essence and something is only what it is because at some stage it needed to be distinguished from something else.
Now Kripke and Putnam have the idea of "baptism" of course this is the Christian name for the Jewish practice of naming a child, but it also serves the purpose of cleansing the child and entering it into faith. I wonder if K&P had this idea that when something like Napoleon is given their name there is a kind of cleansing going on cleanup his identity and fix it to that name. "Cleansing" a word with negative overtones when people try to purify their race and ethnicity, which seems to be a fundamentally linked to naming it and finding difference from other people. This whole idea is a Jewish nonsense. But suppose there is fixed baptism, how does a name evolve? We can envisage the situation under one culture where people have a need to distinguish things one way, and then under another distinguish them completely differently. The two baptisms are creating entirely different essences and we presume the "cleansing" is some totalitarian way of getting rid of other people's claims. We can see from the Holocaust how dangerous and unrealistic this is.
The core nonsense as described in previous posts is the Jewish belief in essence, and their long struggle to believe they have some perfect, separate and unifying substance. Complete nonsense, and it is exactly this wilful ignorance of reality that has led to the perceived, and in many cases self-fulfilling, history of persecution.
So the lesson here for Semites, and Anti-Semites, and Anti-Anti-Semites, etc is that all this comes out of nothing. There never was any "Jew" at the start and it has only developed through a churning mess of self-reflection. DO NOT get sucked in anyone, least of all Jews. If you think you are a Jew get out! It doesn't mean abandoning your culture, history, beliefs, family (everyone has those) but it does mean dropping this thought you are absolutely different in essence from everyone else. That is just a thought, and says nothing about you. And in return if you believe in Jews as people absolutely different in essence from everyone else you need realise it is just a thought and says nothing about them. It works both ways.
Now this is critically linked to the previous post.
The belief that naming someone makes you a person is the source of the belief that we are separate entities from the world and other people. It is perhaps no surprise that the Jews invented psychoanalysis: they need it! Unfortunately these ideas have spread through the West in particular to the US. Freud recognised this when he stepped off the plane in US: "psychoanalysis will do well here!" But no one needs psychoanalysis once they realise they are process and not a distinct baptised essence on which all the events of the Past can hang.
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