6. Therefore I think that Mill is wrong, when he goes on, “The only names of objects which connote nothing are Proper Names, and these have, strictly speaking, no signification.” [1] If the name has no signification, for what reason, or by what means, is it attached to a person or a place? You may say that it is only a conventional mark. But a mark which has power to select from all objects in the world, and bring to our minds, a particular absent object, is surely a significant mark. Granted that it is conventional, yet by what mechanism, and for what purpose, does the convention operate? [1] Cf. Venn, 183 ff, and Bradley, 156. Mill’s point, however, is quite clear. To be told the name of a person or object does not inform us of his or its attributes. Directly, it only warns us by what sign the same person or object will be recognisable in language again. [1] If a name is changed, the new name tells us nothing different from the old, [2] whereas if an object that was called vegetable is now called animal, our conception of it is radically transformed. A name expresses the continued identity of an object, and this implies only a historical continuity of attributes and relations, and no constant attribute whatever. [1] We cannot make it a distinctive mark of proper names that they recur in different and quite disconnected meanings, because the words which are used as general names have this same property. Nor can we say that a proper name is not used in the same sense of more than one object. Family names and national names make this plainly untrue. Through these, and names typically employed, there is a clear gradation from proper to general names. [2] The case of marriage may be urged. But a lady’s change of name does not by itself indicate marriage. It is a mere fact, which may have various explanations. The change of title (from “Miss” to “Mrs.”) is more significant, but it is not a change of name. {92} Thus a _proper_ name is a contradiction in terms. [1] A name should have a meaning. But a meaning cannot be proper--that is, particular. The name-word is therefore like a demonstrative pronoun, if this were attached, by a special convention, to one identifiable object only. It acquires meaning, but its meaning is an ever-growing contradiction with its usage. The meaning is necessarily general, the usage is _ex hypothesi_ particular. [1] So, from the complementary point of view, is a _general_ name. A name, it may be urged, _is_ meant to designate a particular thing or things. And this a name with a true “meaning” cannot do.