 For one thing, we may point to the fact that it is doubtful that, in order to understand the claim that there is some past time at which Angela Merkel is a baby, we have to be able to answer the question ‘What does it take for an infant at some past time to be identical with Merkel?’ in any informative way. Secondly, it may be proposed that in order to understand the claim that there is some possible world in which George Eliot is a scientist, we can rely on our prior understanding of the claim that she might have been a scientist (cf. Kripke 1980, 48, note 15; van Inwagen 1985).