structural:scholar_edition, quality:corruption
Gottlob Frege

In his paper " Über Sinn und Bedeutung " (now usually translated as "On Sense and Reference"), Gottlob Frege argued that proper names present at least two problems in explaining meaning.

Frege can be interpreted as arguing that it was therefore a mistake to think that the meaning of a name is the thing it refers to. Instead, the meaning must be something else — the "sense" of the word. Two names for the same person, then, can have different senses (or meanings): one referent might be picked out by more than one sense. This sort of theory is called a mediated reference theory. Frege argued that, ultimately, the same bifurcation of meaning must apply to most or all linguistic categories, such as to quantificational expressions like "All boats float".