 When Hobbes introduces his story about names in the The Elements of Law he tells us that “A NAME or APPELLATION therefore is the voice of a man, arbitrarily imposed, for a mark to bring to his mind some conception concerning the thing on which it is imposed. Things named are either the objects themselves, as man; or the conception itself that we have of man, as shape or motion; or some privation, which is when we conceive that there is something which we conceive, not in him” (Hobbes 1640, 5.2–3). That is, Hobbes first introduces names as having a private use for individuals, to help them to bring particular ideas to mind. (Hobbes uses ‘name’ in a very broad sense. In that chapter alone, he gives ‘Socrates’, ‘Homer’, ‘man’, ‘just’, ‘valiant’, ‘strong’, ‘comely’, and ‘faith’ as example of names.) Notice here that though the point of using names is to recall ideas, the thing named is not necessarily an idea. It may well be an external object such as, in Hobbes’s example, a man. Later in that chapter, Hobbes starts to talk explicitly about signifying rather than naming. Thus in talking about ambiguity Hobbes says that “the word faith sometimes signifieth the same with belief; sometimes it signifieth particularly that belief which maketh a Christian; and sometimes it signifieth the keeping of a promise” (Hobbes 1640, 5.7). However, it is not at all clear that he really means to introduce signifying as a relation distinct from naming here. Indeed, he seems rather to be giving the same relation two different names.