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In each of his major discussions concerning the function of language, Hobbes remarks that names are words that serve as marks, “imposed on” objects for the sake of recollecting thoughts or conceptions of those objects. Let us examine these, starting with Anti-White, where Hobbes writes that “a name or appellation is a human sound [vox]. Say a person has something in mind, of which he retains from mind-picture [imagio]. He applies to, or imposes on, the thing the human vocal sound as a “note” enabling him to conjure up a similar mind picture” (Hobbes 1976, 373–4). In the Elements of Law Hobbes writes:

In the number of these marks, are those human voices (which we call the names or appellations of things) sensible to the ear, by which we recall into our mind some conception of the things to which we give those names or appellations. As the appellation white bringeth to remembrance the quality of such objects as produce that colour or conception in us. A name or appellation … is the voice of a man arbitrary, imposed for a mark to bring to his mind some conception concerning the thing on which it is imposed.

(EW IV.20)

In Leviathan:

The generall use of Speech, is to transferre our Mentall Discourse, into Verbal; or the Trayne of our Thoughts, into a Trayne of Words; and that for two commodities; whereof the one is, the Registering of the Consequences of our Thoughts; which being apt to slip out of our memory, and put us to a new labour, may again be recalled, by such words as they were marked by. So that the first use of names, is to serve for Markes, or Notes of remembrance. Another is when many use the same words to signifie (by their connexion and order,) one to another, what they conceive, or think of each matter … for this use they are called Signes.

(Hobbes 2012, 50; 1651, 12–13)

And, finally, Hobbes writes in De corpore: “A NAME is a word [vox] taken at pleasure to serve for a mark, which may raise in our mind a thought we had before, and which, being pronounced to others, may be to them a sign of what the speaker had, or had not, before is mind” (EW I.16).

These definitions characterize names by their function. As Biletzki (1997) and Hungerland and Vick (1981) emphasize, Hobbes’s nominalism and materialism effectively preclude him from adopting any view about the metaphysics of meaning according to which there are entities answering to the “meanings” of sentences. Hence, although names in speech signify thoughts, thoughts must be taken as psychological episodes and not abstract objects (i.e., Russellian propositions or Fregean Sinne), since Hobbes denies such things exist. Furthermore, the signification of a name is not anything denoted by the name. Hobbes very clearly distinguishes that which a name signifies from that which a name denotes, or is “imposed” on (about which I shall say more below).⁴

These definitions confirm that the pragmatic “use” theory of meaning reading is the correct one. The essence of a name consists in the use to which that name is put. It is a mark, for the sake of recalling thoughts of the objects on which it is imposed; it is an interpersonal communicative sign, when “pronounced to others,” in the context of a sentence, to express thoughts. Although Hobbes has a lot to say about communicative speech acts and the non-cognitive, expressive uses of language (e.g., Hobbes 2012, 94; 1651, 29), and although these feature prominently in his political and ethical theory (Biletzki 1997; Holden 2016; Pettit 2008), it is clear from the foregoing definitions that the cognitive use – registering the consequences of thoughts in declarative sentences – is the primary one.

Both Leviathan and De corpore are straightforward regarding the relative priority of the two uses of names in speech. In Leviathan, the cognitive use is called, explicitly, the first use of names. In both Leviathan and De corpore, Hobbes gives brief arguments justifying the definition of names and both of these imply that the communicative function of names in overt speech as signs of thought derives from the use of names as notes for the sake of remembrance. In Leviathan, Hobbes argues that it is because the general use of speech is to “register thoughts” that the “first use of names” is to serve as notes of remembrance. What speech generally is useful for is registering thoughts; so, then, an individual name primarily is a token for thought. In De corpore, Hobbes argues that, since an individual person – working alone – can construct names for the things he observes and register his thoughts about them, a name is a mark for thought. But, given that he is a social being and dependent upon others for the preservation and enlargement of his knowledge, he must teach his marks to other people, making them into signs of his thought (EW I.14–15). Hence, although names are both marks for private cognition and also signs for communication, “they serve for marks before they be used as signs” (EW I.15) and cannot be signs “otherwise than by being disposed and ordered in speech” (EW I.15). “So that,” Hobbes says, “the nature of a name consists principally in this, that it is a mark taken for memory’s sake; but it serves also by accident to signify and make known to others what we remember to ourselves” (EW I.15; emphasis added). Therefore, he concludes, names are accurately defined in the manner expressed at De corpore 2.4 (EW I.16) – marks as instruments for thinking and, also, when expressed to others, signs for the communication of thought (EW I.15).