Designation

Designation is the act or mechanism by which a term, symbol, or expression is assigned a specific referent. Where reference describes the relation between sign and object, designation describes the process — causal, conventional, or formal — by which that relation is established and fixed.

In Saul Kripke's philosophy of language, a rigid designator is a term that designates the same object in every possible world in which that object exists. Proper names like 'Aristotle' are rigid designators; descriptions like 'the teacher of Alexander' are not, because a different person could have taught Alexander in another possible world. The distinction between rigid and non-rigid designation is not merely technical. It marks the boundary between those expressions whose meaning is tied to a particular individual and those whose meaning is tied to a role or description that different individuals might satisfy.

The mechanism of designation remains contested. Is it causal chains, social conventions, formal stipulations, or some combination? Each proposal privileges a different dimension of the sign-world relation.