  Proper names were allowed to exhibit the features of common nouns in various respects.  For instance, they could be used metaphorically. Aquinas mentions the use of ‘Achilles’ to refer to strong men, and others used ‘Nero’ as an example of cruel men. More importantly, ‘Marcus’ and ‘Tullius’, as two names of the Roman orator Marcus Tullius Cicero, were favourite examples of synonymous terms.  As such they featured in discussions of the problem of intentional contexts.  The early thirteenth century theologian Praepositinus of Cremona discussed the relation between the speaker’s understanding and the signification of a proposition in the situation where a man knows Marcus, but does not know that he is also called Tullius, and hence believes that the sentence “He is Tullius” (said by someone pointing to Marcus Tullius) is false. A century later Walter Burley asked whether one could infer that a person knows that Tullius is running, given that he knows that Marcus is running, and given that Marcus is Tullius.