When and how the study of naming objects began in philosophy? I
mean how objects are named, how a same object can have different
names refering to different aspects or features of the object.
The closest thing to the "study of naming objects" today, it
seems, would be semiotics or semiology. As a sustained field of
interest it has begun with Ferdinand de Saussure at the
beginning of the 20th century. He convincingly and very
influentially argued that language is a system of signs and that
it does not pertain to "the world in itself" but is rather
arbitrary. Of course, Saussure had many predecessors interested
in the very same question, but his posthumously published
lectures were the main impetus behind turning this interest into
a full blown discipline (which today one will find very far away
from the original Saussurean conjectures). In Cratylus, for
example, Plato is already pondering whether the names of objects
pertain to the "essence" of these objects or if they are simply
arbitrary. Plato in this parti