Names can Change, Descriptions, they Tend to be Inviolate

Suppose we are at the beginning of time, and the animal with form of what we currently label, ‘cat’ were labelled, ‘dog’. Well, we would call what we now refer to as cats, dogs and would not be any worse off from absence of the realization they could have been labelled, ‘cats’.

Suppose, however, that, at beginning of time, it is agreed that an animal that ‘meows’ has label of ‘cat’. Try as we might, unless we discard the origin time agreement, we would not be able to relabel ‘cats’, ‘dogs’.

For concreteness, consider human names. Suppose a child is born and is named, ‘Abel’. Suppose that, later, the child changes his name to ‘son of God’. Assume you come across two different documents, one reading Abel as the name for subject matter of the document, the other reading, son of God. Absent a priori knowledge, on face of it, the documents seemingly pertain to two different persons.

Consider, however, that upon addition of the description, ‘Abel, second son of Adam and Eve’, or ‘son of God, second son of Adam and Eve’, that right away, there is arrival at the realization that ‘Abel’ and ‘son of God’ are one and the same person.

It is ‘Descriptions’ that are sources of uniqueness for either of names or labels.