 But to treat both names and metalinguistically interpreted nominal predicates as semantically basic is generally thought to be inferior theoretical economy (Gray 2017: 436–437). This is surely too quick; a nominal predicate, though semantically basic, would still count as a natural expression of the metalinguistic property it denotes (see Johnson 2018), and the naturalness of the choice could explain the prevalence of the convention across languages and its ease of uptake. In any event, a parallel attempt is made on the anti-metalinguistic side to generate the metalinguistic interpretations of proper nominals from existing resources (Boëer 1975: 395; Leckie 2013; Jeshion 2015: 381; Gray 2017). However, unless those basic resources include the references of names (and Gray 2017 argues that this is hardly a promising route), the metalinguistic theory is welcome to adopt the same thrift. There’s nothing in the metalinguistic account that says the metalinguistic predicates are themselves basic, just that they are more basic than the meanings of names constructed out of them.