SUBJECT AND STRUCTURE OF THE DIALOGUE

The correctness of names

Plato's Cratylus, the subtitle present in the MSS informs us, is ‘about the correctness of names’ (περὶ ὀνομάτων ὀρθότητος). More precisely, it is about the question whether the correctness of names is a natural or a conventional matter. But what do the terms ‘name’ and ‘correctness’ mean here? This is never spelt out explicitly in the dialogue; the characters just take it for granted from the outset.

As for ‘names’, the characters take a generous view: they count as ὀνόματα proper and common nouns, adjectives and verbs in infinitive (414ab, 426c) or participle (421c) mood. They do not explicitly include verbs in finite moods, but they seem to be including them implicitly when they say that the ὄνομα is the ‘smallest’ part of a sentence (385c, see §2.2.2). So it is standard, and doubtless right, to take it that in our dialogue (and elsewhere as well) the term ὄνομα generically applies to any word whose function is not primarily syntactic (hence not to conjunctions and prepositions). Indeed, the term ὄνομα is obviously connected with the verb ὀνομάζειν, ‘to name’; and so an ὄνομα is essentially a word that names or refers to something.

As for the ‘correctness’ of such names, on the face of it this is a vague label.