 Here the unargued identification of the subject of Parmenides’ discourse as “whatever can be thought of or spoken of” prefigures Owen’s identification of it as “whatever can be thought and talked about,” with both proposals deriving from fr. 2.7–8. There follows in Russell’s History an exposition of the problems involved in speaking meaningfully about (currently) non-existent subjects, such as George Washington or Hamlet, after which Russell restates the first stage of Parmenides’ argument as follows: “if a word can be used significantly it must mean something, not nothing, and therefore what the word means must in some sense exist” (Russell 1945, 50). So influential has Russell’s understanding been, thanks in no small part to Owen’s careful development of it, that it is not uncommon for the problem of negative existential statements to be referred to as “Parmenides’ paradox.”