 One way to defend rigid designation in view of the forgoing objection would be to insist that as successful speakers, we do after all know of qualitative criteria by which we are able to distinguish individuals like you by name: some historical figures have in effect adopted this position, thereby defending rigid  designation.[4]  But Kripke would concede that we speakers are not privy to the content of any qualitative criterion characterizing you. It is hard to gainsay the concession. We would certainly be hard-pressed to say in any enlightening way just what qualities characterize you with respect to the various possible worlds. Kripke would evidently agree that there is something that it is to amount to you, as opposed to anything else, and that your essence is what qualifies an object—you—to be the designatum of your name with respect to any possible world (he doesn’t say that your essence is qualitative though, and he outright rejects certain versions of that claim). But Kripke would deny that a speaker would have to know this essence, or to rely upon any other nontrivial criteria distinguishing you from world to world, in order to refer to you by way of a rigid designator (Kripke 1980, pp. 15–20; see also Plantinga 1974, pp. 93–98).