3. Words so connected as that they become signs of our thoughts, are called SPEECH, of which every part is a _name_. But seeing (as is said) both marks and signs are necessary for the acquiring of philosophy, (marks by which we may remember our own thoughts, and signs by which we may make our thoughts known to others), names do both these offices; but they serve for marks before they be used as signs. For though a man were alone in the world, they would be useful to him in helping him to remember; but to teach others, (unless there were some others to be taught) of no use at all. Again, names, though standing singly by themselves, are marks, because they serve to recal our own thoughts to mind; but they cannot be signs, otherwise than by being disposed and ordered in speech as parts of the same. For example, a man may begin with a word, whereby the hearer may frame an idea of something in his mind, which, nevertheless, he cannot conceive to be the idea which was in the mind of him that spake, but that he would say something which began with that word, though perhaps not as by itself, but as part of another word. So that the nature of a name consists principally in this, that it is a mark taken for memory's sake; but it serves also by accident to signify and make known to others what we remember ourselves, and, therefore, I will define it thus: [Sidenote: Definition of a Name.] 4. _A_ NAME _is a word taken at pleasure to serve for a mark, which may raise in our mind a thought like to some thought we had before, and which being pronounced to others, may be to them a sign of what thought the speaker had, or had not before in his mind_. And it is for brevity's sake that I suppose the original of names to be arbitrary, judging it a thing that may be assumed as unquestionable. For considering that new names are daily made, and old ones laid aside; that diverse nations use different names, and how impossible it is either to observe similitude, or make any comparison betwixt a name and a thing, how can any man imagine that the names of things were imposed from their natures? For though some names of living creatures and other things, which our first parents used, were taught by God himself; yet they were by him arbitrarily imposed, and afterwards, both at the Tower of Babel, and since, in process of time, growing everywhere out of use, are quite forgotten, and in their room have succeeded others, invented and received by men at pleasure. Moreover, whatsoever the common use of words be, yet philosophers, who were to teach their knowledge to others, had always the liberty, and sometimes they both had and will have a necessity, of taking to themselves such names as they please for the signifying of their meaning, if they would have it understood. Nor had mathematicians need to ask leave of any but themselves to name the figures they invented, _parabolas_, _hyperboles_, _cissoeides_, _quadratices_, &c. or to call one magnitude A, another B.