[3] Socrates in Plato's Cratylus considers, without taking a position, the possibility whether names are "conventional" or "natural", natural being the "True name" ([τῇ ἀληθείᾳ ὄνομα]), that is, whether language is a system of arbitrary signs or whether words have an intrinsic relation to the things they signify[4] (this anti-conventionalist position is called Cratylism).
The ancient Jews considered God's true name so potent that its invocation conferred upon the speaker tremendous power over His creations.
These talismanic representations are considered to be windows into the metaphysical substance and immutable essence of things—that is, images of the eternal Dao without form.
Many later episodes of the Odyssey depict Odysseus facing the relentless hostility of Poseidon – all of which he could have avoided had he persisted in keeping his real name secret.
[15] Similarly, the belief that children who were not baptised at birth were in particular danger of having the fairies kidnap them and leave changelings in their place may stem from their unnamed state.
[16] In the Scandinavian variants of the ballad Earl Brand, the hero can defeat all his enemies until the heroine, running away with him, pleads with him by name to spare her youngest brother.
[18] For the same reason significant objects in Germanic mythology, which were considered to have some kind of intrinsic personality, had their own names too, for example the legendary Sword Balmung.