Meaningfulness in literary naming within the framework of The Pragmatic Theory of Properhood (TPTP)

Coates, Richard

Abstract

This paper develops ideas originally floated in the Journal of Literary Onomastics 4 (2015) particularly concerning the genesis of “meaningful” or “cratylic” names for characters, so-called “sprechende/redende Namen”. I argue that literary naming falls into three or four basic types. Cratylic naming might be understood as covering aspects of two of these sorts. Two types of consequence follow from the views which I set out. The first type deals with the translatability of names, which I argue is technically impossible because names have no sense. In countering the superficially irrational nature of this idea, I espouse instead a view of name substitution which is completely in harmony with the view in TPTP that names are definitionally senseless; in so-called name-translation, it is the etymology of a name which is accessed, not its “sense”. The second type of consequence has to do with the role of such etymologies in literary reading. An attempt is made to harmonize the notion that etymology is accessible during ordinary reading with current views on the nature of semantic processing more generally.

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jun 11, 2018
• Publication Date: Dec 31, 2018
• Deposit Date: May 7, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: May 8, 2019
• Journal: Onomastica Uralica
• Print ISSN: 1586-3719
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 14
• Pages: 191-202
• Public URL: https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/855203
• Publisher URL: http://onomaural.klte.hu/onomural/
• Additional Information: Additional Information : Special issue of Onomastica Uralica, representing the papers of the 26th International Congress of Onomastic Sciences (Debrecen, 2017).
• Contract Date: May 7, 2019