Name (onoma)

The core business of Antisthenes’ teaching programme must have been his investigation of names: ‘the origin of education is the investigation of names’ (ἀρχὴ παιδϵύσϵως ἡ τῶν ὀνομάτων ἐπίσϰϵψις). He had a lot to say about the use of names. Obviously labelling something with a name (onoma) is not the end of the matter because otherwise there is no sense in using the word ‘investigation’. These enquiries must be informative. What is the signification of ‘name’? Onoma may refer to both persons and things. In Plato it is a noun that functions in contrast with rhēma, predicate. To go back to the example of the horse: if one says this is a horse, one has given an onoma to the animal. Presumably Antisthenes attempted to deduce more knowledge from the connection of names. Thus, he could have linked the name silver to tin, getting insight in what is general, in this case matter. Since in our experience with names we receive practical knowledge, Antisthenes can claim that the investigation of names is the origin of education. He wrote a work on the use of names in five books: On Education or Names; moreover, he wrote On the Use of Names, a Contest.The fact that he wrote extended works on this subject and that he debated about it shows how dear to his heart the investigation of names was. If only we knew more about naming! This could be so, if we were able to understand a certain passage in Plato as referring to Antisthenes, but it is unclear how much of Antisthenes’ thought, if any, there is in what Plato said. We can only make a fresh start from another point of view.

An example of the investigation of a name (polytropos)

We have some utterances of Antisthenes that are related to the investigation of a word. There is an item on the Homeric polytropos, in particular whether or not the word polytropos gives a negative image to Odysseus, whose name is regularly adorned with this epithet. Antisthenes tries to investigate what polytropos means in Homer and goes back to its root: tropos, ‘turn’, or ‘approach’.