It is commonly assumed that the meaning of a word is directly the person, animal, or thing it designates. However, contemporary linguistics and philosophy reveal a greater complexity: there is a crucial distinction between the intrinsic value of the word, the concrete reference it designates at a given moment, and the mental concept formed from it. This perspective highlights that signification is the essence that shapes the existence of things.
For instance, the name “house” implies “perfect accommodation,” designating both a residential building and a company headquarters. Similarly, “time” suggests “fine-tuning,” referring to duration or atmospheric conditions. The anthroponym María Estupiñán Wells means “unipersonal identification,” encompassing the various stages of a person's life. The toponym Fuerteventura, as “unispacial identification,” embraces its multiple historical and physical realities, from the Berber Fuerteventura to the present day.
This view implies that reality as we know it—be it a “house,” “time,” María Estupiñán Wells, or Fuerteventura—would not exist without the significations that words bestow upon them. As Kant noted, our intellect imposes its laws on nature through the categories of understanding formalized in language. Words are not mere classifiers but “sound with meaning that makes the things they designate exist in a certain way,” creating the world of our experiences.
Words are not “noises to classify things,” as is commonly believed, but “sound with meaning that makes the things they designate exist in a certain way.
The relationship between a word's signification and what it designates is arbitrary, which explains polysemy. The same word can designate very different realities, as seen in Jorge Luis Borges's story El informe de Brodie, where the word “nrz” in the Yahoos' language can suggest anything from the starry sky to smallpox. This capacity of words to encompass multiple references demonstrates that what remains constant is the inherent signification and denotation, not the concrete reference, which is mutable.
Only signification and denotation guarantee the identity and unity of things over time. People, animals, and objects are fundamentally names, and it is through them that they endure in collective memory, transcending their physical existence. Names grant us a form of eternity, and when the memory of what is designated fades, the name can persist, seeking new incarnations. Words are more enduring than the realities they designate, forming the link between generations and civilizations, and perpetuating the human soul through the centuries.
