Who was the first person to call something by a name?

Question

And for that matter, what made them choose the name they chose?

For example, why is water called water or air called air?

Answer 1

Adam called the apple it.

Answer 2

The study of such things is called linguistics.

By studying languages and their roots, we can trace back if and when an object have an original name. For common stuff, this is difficult because the original name was probably given a long time ago in a language that we do not know about. For modern stuff, this is a bit easier, as the differences, from language to language, are not that big.

For example, milk was called Galaktos by the Ancient Greeks. The Latins dropped the first syllable, and called it lac (genitive: lactis). It became latte in Italian and lait in French.

The Milky Way gave us the word Galaxy, which we now apply to any object that belongs to the same category (large, organised collection of stars) as our own.

In English, the same thing is called "milk". The word comes from the Anglo-Saxon meolc. It shares roots with many other nordic languages, plus Russian (moloko) and German (milch).

It does not seem to come from the Greek (galaktos). Therefore, if it started from a single word (and you'd think milk is something known for a long time by humans), then the common root must be well before the Greeks.

Answer 3

Wow that is quite a question. If the religious answer arent what you were looking for then I am afraid you are out of luck. The reality is the first thing that someone probably named was themselves. If you follow Darwinism, then early humans probably didnt have speech when they became self aware (sentient as it is known scientifically) so they would have not have had words at that point just grunts, growls and other animal noises. Carryin on that theme we will never know the name of the first person to name anything something as even after Humans learned how to speak they hadn't developed a written language so all history was passed along orally. It is possible that the bible might have this right as if you take it less literally the first person to name something could have had a name variant on Adam (Adam is an enlish interpretation of a much older name).

Answer 4

Even though I am a scientist, I am going to go with a metaphorical interpretation of the Abrahamic tradition of Adam. In that tradition, the first man (as in first creature that could rightly be called a human) was distinguished in part by his ability to characterize abstractly into categories and to apply a fixed label to these categories using spoken language. These features seem to be a significant part of what separates humans from other higher primates, especially as concerns the spoken language. This metaphor also implies that "naming" is as old as mankind itself. The words originally used are obviously lost.

The science of etymology deals with the origins of words. It is very difficult to establish with any certainty words that are more than a few thousand years old. The roots of modern civilization are at least 9000 years old, and the capacity for naming is probably much older. The Aurignacian cave paintings in Spain and France go back at least 25,000 years, and suggest a clear notion of categorization and abstract thought almost certainly consistent with language, and so, naming.

It is very likely that some of the earlist names for things in nature were onomatopoetic (sounded like the noise that the animal or object made).

Answer 5

Each word hs it'w own history
Enter the word you are looking for into a search engine along with the word etymology and you will see it's history.

Answer 6

Adam was the first person to call anything by its name. He was told He could name all the animals in his paradise. He also named the trees and other things. Jehovah God and His Son Jesus called things by their name, but hey were in their spirit form......Keck

Answer 7

I don"t know who it was or what the name was but it was the begging of objective man and took him out of the realm of long lived creatures like the dinosaurs!

Answer 8

Adam
God allowed him to choose the names of all the wild beasts.

Answer 9

Most likely the Greeks and they documented it too.

Answer 10

bob did this just last week....not. I don't know them personally, or otherwise....how could we?