It being needless to illustrate at any greater length the subject of many-worded names, we proceed to the distinctions which have been established among names, not according to the words they are composed of, but according to their signification.
§ 3. All names are names of something, real or imaginary; but all things have not names appropriated to them individually. For some individual objects we require, and consequently have, separate distinguishing names; there is a name for every person, and for every remarkable place. Other objects, of which we have not occasion to speak so frequently, we do not designate by a name of their own; but when the necessity arises for naming them, we do so by putting together several words, each of which, by itself, might be and is used for an indefinite number of other objects; as when I say, _this stone_: "this" and "stone" being, each of them, names that may be used of many other objects besides the particular one meant, although the only object of which they can both be used at the given moment, consistently with their signification, may be the one of which I wish to speak.
Were this the sole purpose for which names, that are common to more things than one, could be employed; if they only served, by mutually limiting each other, to afford a designation for such individual objects as have no names of their own; they could only be ranked among contrivances for economizing the use of language. But it is evident that this is not their sole function. It is by their means that we are enabled to assert _general_ propositions; to affirm or deny any predicate of an indefinite number of things at once. The distinction, therefore, between _general_ names, and _individual_ or _singular_ names, is fundamental; and may be considered as the first grand division of names.
A general name is familiarly defined, a name which is capable of being truly affirmed, in the same sense, of each of an indefinite number of things. An individual or singular name is a name which is only capable of being truly affirmed, in the same sense, of one thing.
Thus, _man_ is capable of being truly affirmed of John, Peter, George, Mary, and other persons without assignable limit: and it is affirmed of all of them in the same sense; for the word man expresses certain qualities, and when we predicate it of those persons, we assert that they all possess those qualities. But _John_ is only capable of being truly affirmed of one single person, at least in the same sense. For although there are many persons who bear that name, it is not conferred upon them to indicate any qualities, or anything which belongs to them in common; and cannot be said to be affirmed of them in any _sense_ at all, consequently not in the same sense. "The present queen of England" is also an individual name. For, that there never can be more than one person at a time of whom it can be truly affirmed, is implied in the meaning of the words.