Preliminaries

Abstract

Poets, magicians, linguists, and logicians have often been fascinated, puzzled and angered by the protean functions of proper names. The interest of poets was mostly concerned with the connotations which the phonemes and the morphemes of personal or place-names carry with themselves and may awaken the memory of syndry bits of information about the bearers of the names. Even a bare mentioning, a mere echo of the name of some significant person or place — not to speak of the significant use of such a name — may occasion the floating of forgotten images. As if the name which supposes to be a mere label for a thing tries to tell us that it can do many other things besides its supposed proper role — it can tell us tall tales about its bearer.