If names are significant by natural rectitude, or by partaking of the Name-Form, it follows that all names must be right or true, one as well as another. If a name be not right, it cannot be significant: that is, it is no name at all: it is a mere unmeaning sound. A name, in order to be significant, must imitate the essence of the thing named. If you add any thing to a number, or subtract any thing from it, it becomes thereby a new number: it is not the same number badly rendered. So with a letter: so too with a name. There is no such thing as a bad name. Every name must be either significant, and therefore, right — or else it is not a name. So also there is no such thing as a false proposition: you cannot say the thing that is not: your words in that case have no meaning; they are only an empty sound. The hypothesis that the law-giver may have distributed names erroneously is therefore not admissible.[63] Moreover, you see that he must have known well, for otherwise he would not have given names so consistent with each other, and with the general Herakleitean theory.[64] And since the name is by necessity a representation or copy of the thing, whoever knows the name, must also know the thing named. There is in fact no other way of knowing or seeking or finding out things, except through their names.[65]
[63] Plato, Kratyl. p. 429 B-C.
Sokr. Πάντα ἄρα τὰ ὀνόματα ὀρθως κεῖται;
Krat. Ὅσα γε ὀνόματα ἔστι.
Sokr. Τί οὖν; Ἑρμογένει τῷδε πότερον μηδὲ ὄνομα τοῦτο κεῖσθαι φῶμεν, εἰ μή τι αὐτῷ Ἑρμοῦ γενέσεως προσήκει, ἢ κεῖσθαι μέν, οὐ μέντοι ὀρθῶς γε;
Krat. Οὐδὲ κεῖσθαι ἔμοιγε δοκεῖ, ἀλλὰ δοκεῖν κεῖσθαι. εἶναι δὲ ἑτέρου τοῦτο τοὔνομα, οὗπερ καὶ ἡ φύσις ἡ τὸ ὄνομα δηλοῦσα.
The critics say that these last words ought to be read ἢν τὸ ὄνομα δηλοῖ, as Ficinus has translated, and Schleiermacher after him. They are probably in the right; at the same time, reasoning upon the theory of Kratylus, we say without impropriety, that “the thing indicates the name”.
That which is erroneously called a bad name is no name at all (so Kratylus argues), but only seems to be a name to ignorant persons. Thus also in the Platonic Minos (c. 9, p. 317): a bad law is no law in reality, but only seems to be a law to ignorant men, see above, [ch. xiv. p. 88].
Compare the like argument about νόμος in Xenoph. Memorab. i. 2, 42-47, and Lassalle, Herakleitos, vol. ii. p. 392.
[64] Plato, Krat. p. 436 C. Ἀλλὰ μη οὐχ οὕτως ἔχῃ, ἀλλ’ ἀναγκαῖον ᾖ, εἰδότα τίθεσθαι τὸν τιθέμενον τὰ ὀνόματα· εἰ δὲ μή, ὅπερ πάλαι ἐγὼ ἔλεγον, οὐδ’ ἂν ὀνόματα εἴη. Μέγιστον δέ σοι ἔστω τεκμήριον ὅτι οὐκ ἔσφαλται τῆς ἀληθείας ὁ τιθέμενος· οὐ γὰρ ἂν ποτε οὕτω ξύμφωνα ἦν αὐτῷ ἅπαντα. ἢ οὐκ ἐνενόεις αὐτὸς λέγων ὡς πάντα κατ’ αὐτὸ καὶ ἐπὶ ταὐτὸν ἐγίγνετο τὰ ὀνόματα;