The proper name: a Precarious stability

Fundamentally, the true function of a proper name is to stand for a unique entity, such as the White House, in Washington, a name allowed to take on a capital letter when it was attributed to the residence of the President of the United States. But in 1792, it was only a white-painted house, not different from other white houses in the country. As a matter of fact, if you try to go into the status of the proper name, you soon understand that its main characteristic is to be unsteady: a proper name may start being a common name, and then becoming a proper name, as above, but it may as well follow the other way round, from being at first a proper name. For example, Sandwich was the family name of Lord Sandwich, who was so addicted to playing cards that he would never be one to leave the party and preferred to quickly eat his slice of bread and meat without moving. This paper reviews some examples of the evolution of proper names in French and in other languages, taking also into account the particular case of pseudonyms.