# Cratylus **Domain:** Philosophy / Language **Doc Type:** Concept Node **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition The ***Cratylus*** is a dialogue by [[wiki/Plato|Plato]] on the correctness of names. Cratylus argues that names belong to things by nature, carrying their meaning in their very sounds; Hermogenes argues that names are a matter of convention and agreement. Socrates tests both views, offering a long and often playful series of etymologies that derive names from their sounds and parts. The dialogue is the founding text in Western thought on whether language is natural or arbitrary, a question later sharpened by [[wiki/Ferdinand de Saussure|Ferdinand de Saussure]] and still alive in [[wiki/Phonosemantics|phonosemantics]]. ## Corpus Context The *Cratylus* is the classical ancestor of [[wiki/Phonetic Etymology|Phonetic Etymology]]: it is the first sustained attempt in Western philosophy to find meaning in the sounds and parts of words. ## Relationships - **Author:** [[wiki/Plato|Plato]]. - **Heirs:** [[wiki/Green Language|Green Language]] · [[wiki/Phonosemantics|Phonosemantics]]. - **Modern counterpoint:** [[wiki/Ferdinand de Saussure|Ferdinand de Saussure]]. - **Practice:** [[wiki/Phonetic Etymology|Phonetic Etymology]]. - **Corpus project:** [[projects/Ten Years Building a Symbolic Language Engine|Ten Years Building a Symbolic Language Engine]], Bryant McGill's symbolic language engine, built from 1994 into the mid-2000s, with its phonological engine, sound indexes, and lexical knowledge graph. ## Sources - Plato, *Cratylus*, trans. C. D. C. Reeve, in *Plato: Complete Works*, ed. John M. Cooper (Hackett, 1997). ## See Also [[wiki/Etymology|Etymology]] · [[wiki/Semiotics|Semiotics]]