Abstract: Most work on names can be grouped into three overlapping traditions: onomastics proper, philosophical concerns with names, and linguistic studies of names in general or in particular languages. All of these traditions have focused from different perspectives on problems associated with the meaning of names, their etymology, their function, what they have in common semantically with nouns, and how they diverge. The study of these issues and how they relate to morphosyntax requires a consistent terminology. For the purposes of a discussion, the distinctions proposed by Lyons (sense vs. denotation vs. reference) are invoked, and a further distinction is drawn between the lexical (sense) and encyclopaedic knowledge that may be attached to words, including names, together with recognition of the difficulties of maintaining it.

Keywords: semantics of names, sense, denotation, reference, lexical knowledge, encyclopaedic knowledge,