Cratylus

"Cratylus" by Plato is one of the philosopher's surviving dialogues. The subject of Cratylus is on the correctness of names. In the dialogue, Socrates is asked by two men, Cratylus and Hermogenes, to tell them whether names are "conventional" or "natural", that is, whether language is a system of arbitrary signs or whether words have an intrinsic relation to the things they signify. These three men piece together the idea of naming and whether or not it should be done on a broad-spectrum in a thought-provoking and surprisingly relevant way.