what's in a name in English

[Show additional information ▼] [Hide additional information ▲]

Etymology: Coined by William Shakespeare in 1597 in "Romeo and Juliet," act 2, scene 2: : What's in a name? That which we call a rose, : By any other name would smell as sweet. Etymology templates: {{coin|en|William Shakespeare|in=1597}} Coined by William Shakespeare in 1597 Head templates: {{head|en|phrase}} what's in a name

[Show JSON for postprocessed kaikki.org data shown on this page ▼] [Hide JSON for postprocessed kaikki.org data shown on this page ▲]

{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "William Shakespeare",
        "in": "1597"
      },
      "expansion": "Coined by William Shakespeare in 1597",
      "name": "coin"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "Coined by William Shakespeare in 1597 in \"Romeo and Juliet,\" act 2, scene 2:\n: What's in a name? That which we call a rose,\n: By any other name would smell as sweet.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "phrase"
      },
      "expansion": "what's in a name",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English questions",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with 1 entry",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "Pages with entries",
          "parents": [],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Used to argue that something's name is arbitrary and does not give any information as to its qualities; the names of things do not affect what they really are."
      ],
      "id": "en-what's_in_a_name-en-phrase-E8ImnSz4",
      "links": [
        [
          "name",
          "name#English"
        ],
        [
          "arbitrary",
          "arbitrary#English"
        ],
        [
          "information",
          "information#English"
        ],
        [
          "qualities",
          "quality#English"
        ],
        [
          "affect",
          "affect"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "what's in a name"
}

[Show JSON for raw wiktextract data ▼] [Hide JSON for raw wiktextract data ▲]

{
  "etymology_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "William Shakespeare",
        "in": "1597"
      },
      "expansion": "Coined by William Shakespeare in 1597",
      "name": "coin"
    }
  ],
  "etymology_text": "Coined by William Shakespeare in 1597 in \"Romeo and Juliet,\" act 2, scene 2:\n: What's in a name? That which we call a rose,\n: By any other name would smell as sweet.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "en",
        "2": "phrase"
      },
      "expansion": "what's in a name",
      "name": "head"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "phrase",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English coinages",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English lemmas",
        "English multiword terms",
        "English phrases",
        "English questions",
        "English terms coined by William Shakespeare",
        "English terms first attested in Shakespeare",
        "Pages with 1 entry",
        "Pages with entries"
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Used to argue that something's name is arbitrary and does not give any information as to its qualities; the names of things do not affect what they really are."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "name",
          "name#English"
        ],
        [
          "arbitrary",
          "arbitrary#English"
        ],
        [
          "information",
          "information#English"
        ],
        [
          "qualities",
          "quality#English"
        ],
        [
          "affect",
          "affect"
        ]
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "what's in a name"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2025-03-23 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2025-03-21 using wiktextract (fef8596 and 633533e). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.

"what's in a name" meaning in English

Phrase