 By appealing to the primacy of names, Rosenstock-Huessy is not saying that one must always accept one’s tradition; traditions have to constantly be reinvented or reconfigured. However he does dispute that the basis of that transformation is primarily a philosophical act, as if the disinterested philosopher could digest and judge everything with his or her own mind. Names are constantly being renegotiated and ‘to think means to introduce better names’ (1970a, 174). But for the most part this process occurs through the trial and catastrophes of events and a social consensus about the meaning of the event. Tracing the naming of what is now known as the Holocaust is one example of how naming is often a matter of trial and error before there is a consensus about which name is appropriate for the experience that has traumatized a group and which that social group wishes to embed in its collective/institutional memory and pass on to future generations (1970a, 174).