 (1) is true, and (2) is false. Obviously, this difference in truth-value is traceable to some difference between the expressions “Barack Obama” and “John McCain”. What about these expressions explains the difference in truth-value between these sentences? It is very plausible that it is the fact that “Barack Obama” stands for the man who was in fact the 44th president of the United States, whereas “John McCain” stands for a man who was not. This suggests that the reference of a proper name—its contribution to the determination of truth conditions of sentences in which it occurs—is the object for which that name stands. (While this is plausible, it is not uncontroversial that the purpose of a name is to refer to an individual; see Graff Fara (2015) and Jeshion (2015) for arguments on opposite sides of this issue.)