noticeable in the Latin language. Let us take for an example the full
name of a distinguished Roman--Publius Cornelius Scipio AEmilianus
Africanus minor. Here it is only the praenomen, Publius, that can be
said to be a mere individual mark, and even this distinctly indicates
the sex of the owner. The nomen proper, Cornelius, declares the wearer
of it to belong to the illustrious gens Cornelia. The cognomen,
Scipio, further specifies him as a member of a distinguished family in
that gens. The agnomen adoptivum indicates his transference by
adoption from one gens to another. The second agnomen recalls the
fact of his victory over the Carthaginians, while the addition of the
word 'minor' distinguishes him from the former wearer of the same
title. The name, instead of being devoid of meaning, is a chapter of
history in itself. Homeric epithets, such as 'The Cloud-compeller,'
'The Earth-shaker' are instances of intensive proper names. Many of
our own family names are obviously connotative in their origin,
implying either some personal peculiarity, e.g. Armstrong, Cruikshank,
Courteney; or the employment, trade or calling of the original bearer
of the name, Smith, Carpenter, Baker, Clark, Leach, Archer, and so on;
or else his abode, domain or nationality, as De Caen, De Montmorency,
French, Langley; or simply the fact of descent from some presumably
more noteworthy parent, as Jackson, Thomson, Fitzgerald, O'Connor,
Macdonald, Apjohn, Price, Davids, etc. The question, however, whether
a term is connotative or not, has to be decided, not by its origin,
but by its use. We have seen that there are some proper names which,
in a rough sense, may be said to possess no intension.

163. The other kind of singular terms, namely, designations ( 113)
are obviously connotative. We cannot employ even the simplest of them
without conveying more or less information about the qualities of the
thing which they are used to denote. When, for instance, we say 'this