The Rectification of Names

The following observation brings to mind why people fight over pronouns and terms like “gay marriage,” “women,” and “men.”

Hu Shih aptly states that for Confucius, rectification of names is not a task for the grammarian or lexicographer, for it is a primarily an ethical task of intellectual reorganization.

“Its object is, first, to make the names stand for what they ought to stand for, and then to so reorganize the social and political relations and institutions as to make them what their names indicate they ought to be. The rectification of names thus consists in making real relationships and duties and institutions conform as far as possible to the ideal meanings, which, however obscured and neglected they may now become, can still be re-discovered and re-established by proper study and, literally ‘judicious’ use of the names.”[19]

— Antonio S. Cau. “The Emergence of the History of Chinese Philosophy.” The Routledge History of Chinese Philosophy. p. 47 (Emphasis mine)