The Semantic Content of Partially Descriptive Names

Abstract

According to contemporary Millianism the semantic content of an ordinary proper name is simply its referent. In his recent book Beyond rigidity Scott Soames elaborated a new version of millianism. He claimed that some linguistically complex names such as Professor Saul Kripke or Princeton University have partially descriptive semantic content. In addition to their unique referents, these names are always associated with a special kind of description. I argue in this paper that Soames's theory of partially descriptive names fails, because descriptive contents can be found only in the background knowledge of competent speakers.