ÓΝΟΜΑ, PRÂGMA (nom, chose) [grec]

subs. nt.

La réflexion sur l’ônoma « le nom » a d’emblée un enjeu ontologique : Héraclite   et Parménide   dénoncent la contradiction entre ce qui est nommé et les dénominations données par une langue irréfléchie ou vide. Du Cratyle   de Platon   aux épicuriens et aux stoïciens en passant par Aristote  , la problématique de l’ônoma reste essentiellement celle de sa rectitude : de son rapport au prâgma, à « la chose » dont on s’occupe (en rhétorique, prâgma, de prássô « accomplir », désigne l’argument d’un discours). Selon que la relation établie entre l’ônoma, le terme appellatif, et prâgma, son contenu, est immédiate ou médiate, naturelle ou instituée, une réponse différente est donnée à la question de l’origine de la langue, donc de la portée à accorder aux étymologies, et à celle de la fonction — mimétique ou diacritique, analytique ou expressive — du langage. (M. Dixsaut) [NP  ]

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Ὄνομα. Name, noun. Heraclitus f. 24: “They would not have known the name of justice if these things did not exist.” Parmenides f. 8, lines 39–40: “All these things are but names which mortals have given, believing them to be true—coming into being and passing away, being and not being, change of place and alteration of bright color.” Ever since Odysseus told the Cyclops that his name was “Oudeis,” which means “Nobody”—and subsequently the Cyclops ran out screaming to his neighbors, “Nobody has blinded me”—the ancient Greeks were concerned with the possibility that words, and particularly names, might fail to communicate the truth (Od. IX, 364). The extreme position is that of Gorgias, DK 82B3, that there is no connection between names and things.

Are there natural names, or are all names conventional? The Sophists clearly talked about these issues, a lot—Prodicus and Protagoras more than others perhaps. In Aristophanes’ Clouds (875), Socrates   is represented as arguing that the words we use for male and female chickens are wrong; we can translate the argument as saying that we really ought to call roosters “chickers” and hens “chickesses.” The Cratylus is entirely devoted to a discussion of the correctness of names, whether words have a natural or conventional origin. Since for Plato words in principle correspond with Forms (eidē), their “correctness” is a matter of some importance.

At the beginning of On Interpretation, Aristotle says, “Spoken sounds are symbols of affections in the soul (psychē), and written marks symbols of spoken sounds. And just as written marks are not the same for all people, neither are spoken sounds. But what these are in the first place signs of—affections of the soul—are the same for all; and what these affections are likenesses of—actual things—are also the same.” He goes on to define (Int. 2) an onoma as “a spoken sound, significant by convention (nomos), without time, none of whose parts is significant in separation. . . . No name is a name naturally but only when it has become a symbol.”

The theory that language is natural did have significant support: Herodotus tells the story of the Pharaoh “Psamtik” who had some children raised by deaf-mutes; when the children were brought before him, they said something like “bĕ,” which he took to be the Phrygian word for bread. Herodotus also points out that the children got their milk from goats. Of philosophers, Epicurus   believed that the origin of language was natural, that the sounds made by animals and babies are the beginning of language (Letter to Herodotus, 75–87; Lucretius V.1028–1090).

The Stoics, in contrast, believed that language stems from logos, reason, and that consequently only human beings have true language. Following the lead of Socrates in the Cratylus, the Stoics paid a great deal of attention to etymology (etymon actually means “true”), attempting to find the “true” meaning of words. [HDAGP  ]