 How are we to extend this framework to statements about what is possible and necessary for particular individuals—what are known as de re modal statements (‘de re’ meaning ‘about a thing’)—for example, that Clover, a particular (actually existing) four-legged cow, could not have been a giraffe, or that she could have had just three legs? A natural extension of the framework is to treat the first statement as equivalent to the claim that there is no possible world in which Clover is a giraffe, and the second as equivalent to the claim that there is some possible world in which Clover is three-legged. But this last claim appears to imply that there is some possible world in which Clover exists and has three legs—from which it seems inescapably to follow that one and the same individual—Clover—exists in some merely possible world as well as in the actual world: that there is an identity between Clover and some individual in another possible world. Similarly, it appears that the de re modal statements ‘George Eliot could have been a scientist rather than a novelist’ and ‘Bertrand Russell might have been a playwright instead of a philosopher’ will come out as ‘There is some possible world in which George Eliot (exists and) is a scientist rather than a novelist’ and ‘There is some possible world in which Bertrand Russell (exists and) is a playwright and not a philosopher’. Again, each of these appears to involve a commitment to an identity between an individual who exists in the actual world (Eliot, Russell) and an individual who exists in a non-actual possible world.