Names acquire their reference through social convention and historical chains, not by metaphysical necessity—the same individual could be named 'Socrates' or 'Sokrates' in different worlds.

?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.

No one has weighed in yet. Be the first to share reasons for or against this statement.

Historical chains(as used in philosophy of language): A sequence of connected events or uses stretching back through time—in this case, how a name gets passed down and used by different people over history.
Social convention(what normativity would reduce to if the statement's worry were true): Rules or standards that people in a society agree to follow, but that could be different in another society (like driving on the left vs. right).
metaphysical necessity(Distinguishing types of necessity): A property of things that must be the case but not purely by logical form — true in all possible worlds without being logical tautologies
possible worlds(Leibniz's modal semantics, anticipating contemporary possible-worlds semantics): Worlds that have existence in a tenuous sense; fictional worlds used to characterize the nature of possibles that are never actualized

Based on where you are in your exploration