Naming in Animals, with Reference to Playing

Abstract

In 1975, I published the first version of an article (later in Sebeok 1976, Chapter 8), in which I discussed the classification of six categories of signs (or, more accurately, of aspects of them), including a type I called name, and mentioned casually that in well organized vertebrate societies—such as are found among birds and especially mammals—individual members tend to bear a singular proper name (SPN), marking each carrier animal as unique, and that the establishment of this kind of social organization presupposes, among other techniques of mutual cooperation in adults, “play” (Sebeok 1976:139). Next year, there appeared a fascinating and amply circumstantiated study by Hediger, on “Proper Names in the Animal Kingdom,” in which the great animal psychologist remarked that “The word proper name (propri nomi) for animals was probably first used by Sebeok” (1976:1360). In his chapter, “Auch Tiere haben Eigennamen,” Hediger (1980:70) repeats: “Der erste Autor, der in Zusammenhang mit Tieren nicht nur von Namen, sondern regelrecht von Eigennamen (propri nomi) spricht, ist meines wissens Thomas A. Sebeok “[The first author who regularly speaks, in connection with animals, not only of names but of proper names (propri nomi), is, to my knowledge, Thomas A. Sebeok.] If true, I find the attribution a bit surprising, since the extension of this particular mode of signifying, i.e., naming, to speechless creatures of certain classes, would seem to necessarily postulate the use of appropriate supportive and steadily reinforcing signs, viz., manifest labels that make unambiguously explicit and quickly obvious the precise hierarchical location occupied by every separate animal in the complex but intimate cat’s-cradle arrangement, or communication network, where it chances to belong.