Definition:Proper Name

Definition

A proper name is a symbol or collection of symbols used to identify a particular object uniquely.

In contrast with natural language, a proper name has a wider range than being the particular identifying label attached to a particular single entity (be it a person, or a place, or whatever else).

For example:

Sloth is a proper name for the concept of being lazy.

Rain is a proper name for the meteorological phenomenon of water falling from the sky.

Also known as

Other terms for proper name that can be found are:

name

individual constant

constant, particularly when applied to a number

parameter.

Also see

• Results about proper names can be found here.

Sources

• 1964: Donald Kalish and Richard Montague: Logic: Techniques of Formal Reasoning ... (previous) ... (next): $\text{III}$: "ALL" and "SOME": $\S 1$
• 1973: Irving M. Copi: Symbolic Logic (4th ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): $4$: Propositional Functions and Quantifiers: $4.1$: Singular Propositions and General Propositions
• 1980: D.J. O"Connor and Betty Powell: Elementary Logic ... (previous) ... (next): $\S \text{III}$: The Logic of Predicates $(1): \ 2$: Predicate expressions
• 1989: Ephraim J. Borowski and Jonathan M. Borwein: Dictionary of Mathematics ... (previous) ... (next): name
• 1996: H. Jerome Keisler and Joel Robbin: Mathematical Logic and Computability ... (previous) ... (next): $\S 2.1$: Introduction
• 1998: David Nelson: The Penguin Dictionary of Mathematics (2nd ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): constant: 2.
• 2008: David Nelson: The Penguin Dictionary of Mathematics (4th ed.) ... (previous) ... (next): constant: 2.