Real Name

Full Title or Name

This is a formal definition of a Common Name, or that name that is recognized by the world around us, either common law or by legislation or other authority.

Context

Several International human rights instruments, such as Article 7 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child and Article 24(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights also recognized a right to birth registration.

“Regard your good name as the richest jewel you can possibly be possessed of -- for credit is like fire; when once you have kindled it you may easily preserve it, but if you once extinguish it, you will find it an arduous task to rekindle it again. The way to a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.” ― Socrates

Philosophy

However, as Kripke argued in "Naming and Necessity", a name does not secure its reference via any process of description fitting. Rather, a name determines its reference via a historical-causal link tracing back to the process of naming. And thus, Kripke thinks that a name does not have a sense, or, at least, does not have a sense which is rich enough to play the reference-determining role. Moreover, a name, in Kripke's view, is a rigid designator, which refers to the same object in all possible worlds. Following this line of thought, Kripke suggests that any scientific identity statement such as "Water is H2O" is also a necessary statement, i.e. true in all possible worlds. Kripke thinks that this is a phenomenon that the descriptivist cannot explain.

In his article on "Proper Names", John R. Searle argues that the sense of a name applies to proper names. He presents the following examples:

(a) “Tully = Tully” is analytically true.
(b) Is “Tully = Cicero” synthetic? If so, then each name must have a different sense.

Initially, the idea that proper names have senses seems implausible. After all, we don’t typically provide definitions for proper names as we do for predicates. Searle suggests that both (a) and (b) are analytically true. The linguistic rules governing the use of “Cicero” and “Tully” establish that both names refer to the same identical object. Thus, the truth of their identity can be determined solely by these rules.