Socio(historical) onomastics through the languagephilosophical lens, with reference to early New England titles of civility

Abstract

This paper offers a number of semiological reflections on proper names. It contrasts the Saussurean approach to names with the related socio-onomastic (i.e. Labovian) approach and draws conclusions about their theoretical coherence and empirical viability. It further argues that an ‘informationist’ approach to names, which introduces a conception of the sign compatible with the cognitive sciences, does not advance our understanding of either semiology or onomastics, being fixated on a questionable analogy of the human mind/brain to the computer. Instead, the paper promotes an alternative approach to names based on an integrational semiology as developed by the linguist Roy Harris. The second part of the article revisits a study on colonial New England titles of civility and suggests that sociohistorical onomastics, like socio-onomastics, is founded on a dubious metaphysical assumption concerning the ontology of ‘language’.