 The obvious route to an analogy between kind terms and singular direct reference is to focus not on natural kind predicates but on singular natural kind terms (see first paragraph of Section 4 above). We should regard terms such as ‘water’, ‘gold’, ‘Rattus rattus’, etc. as denoting abstract individuals and objects (or some other kinds of entity that may be the constant recipient of reference across worlds). Thus the direct reference view applied to such terms says that the semantic value of those terms just is those abstract individuals, and the claim that the terms are rigid designators is the claim that they denote the same abstract individual, the same natural kind, with respect to all possible worlds. Rigid designation is a consequence of direct reference (but not vice versa). (See Martí 2003 for a discussion of the relationship between Millianism, direct reference, and rigid designation. See also Sullivan 2005.)