“Towns, roads, peoples, houses, all are called the same in every language, but their names are merely labels which tell us nothing about them.”Marcel Proust · În căutarea timpului pierdut · 1913 · Volumul II, „La umbra fetelor în floare”, partea a doua
Names fix, reality flows: to name something is not to know it.
Proust notices that language classifies but does not know. The word "Venice" evokes different images for each person, none of which matches the real city, which must be lived to be known. The mechanism is the gap between sign and experience: names fix, reality flows. Saying "my friend" says nothing about the concrete person, whose gestures and silences only presence reveals.
Why it matters It warns against the illusion that we know things because we can name them, from people to countries.