 On this view, “I am Elvis”, said by Elvis, is true just in case Elvis is Elvis, thus necessarily true. Ditto for “Yesterday was 4 March 2020”, said on 5 March 2020, which is true just in case 4 March 2020 is 4 March 2020. Expressing those necessary truths can, however, give contingent information to hearers who already knew things are self-identical. To capture the difference between “I am Elvis” and “Elvis is Elvis”, when uttered by Elvis as well as by someone else—say, Aretha—we would need a story about the meaning of “I” that did not treat it as a name. Kaplan took such meaning as a function from a context of utterance to an object, selecting the speaker as the object. Similarly, the meaning of “yesterday” is a function from the day of utterance, selecting the day before. This function is called the character of the expression. My knowing the character (and facts about context) lets me take new information from the utterances. I know “I” picks out the speaker and that the speaker said “I am Elvis”. If I trust him, I can work out the speaker is Elvis. I might not have known that before, although I knew that Elvis is Elvis.