Naming

Naming is not only definition; it is also a kind of concealment. From code variables to human relationships, we simplify the world through naming—and pay the price for it.

Only Two Hard Things

There is a famous joke in computer science: there are only two hard things in programming—cache invalidation and naming things.

Beginners are often puzzled: what's so hard about naming? a, b, data, temp—or, if all else fails, flag1, flag2. But anyone who's written code for a few years knows that when you stop at the keyboard, trying to find a fitting name for a variable, a function, or a class inside a complex business logic, you are, in fact, doing a deep philosophical exercise.

You are defining its boundary.

When you name a variable isValid, you are implying it has only two states—"yes" and "no"—and you have excluded possibilities like "validating" or "partially valid". When you name a module UserAuth, you are saying it shouldn't be responsible for "sending emails"—unless you decide to break encapsulation through some dirty trick.

In the world of code, wrong naming is disastrous. If you name a class that not only handles login but also initializes database connections and cleans logs as LoginController, the next maintainer will get lost when trying to find database connection code. Wrong naming is not merely a mistake in identifiers; it is a misalignment of mental models.

Code must be precise because machines don't understand "you know what I mean". But interestingly, when we leave the IDE and return to a reality full of ambiguity, we still carry this compulsion to "control everything by naming". We crave labels for everything, believing that once we give something a name, we understand it—and have it under control.

Yet the "compiler" of the real world is far more complicated than we imagine.

Scripting Relationships

The objects we are most enthusiastic to name are relationships between people.

In an atomized society, two independent souls meet and produce a series of complex chemical reactions: admiration, dependence, physical attraction, intellectual resonance—perhaps mixed with a bit of competitiveness and some inexpressible sense of destiny. It is a chaotic, fluid, unique energy.

But we can't stand this chaos. Social discipline demands a quick definition: what is your relationship?

Are you "friends"? "lovers"? "friends with benefits"? "partners"?

Once we choose one name, say "lovers", a huge cost follows. The name is no longer just a label; it is a heavy, pre-written script.

If we name it "lovers", the social script says: we should say good night every day, exchange gifts on certain holidays, be responsible for exclusivity, and fulfill a series of rights and obligations under this name.

The unique interaction pattern that may have belonged only to the two of you is overwritten by the generic class called "lovers". You are no longer two concrete individuals interacting; you are two role players acting out a scene.

This is one of the costs of naming: it uses a general script to erase individual uniqueness.

How many relationships are forced to end because they cannot be classified by the existing vocabulary? How many people, in order to maintain a name like "married couple" or "best friends", painfully cut themselves to fit the definition, trimming away those tendrils of the soul that don't belong? While seeking security, we kill infinite possibilities.

Pathologizing Emotions

Looking inward, our naming of our own feelings is equally concealing.

Modern psychology and psychiatry have given us words for describing emotions and getting help. That is meaningful progress: diagnoses can open access to treatment, support, and reasonable rest. But when these words are overused, they can also become a hasty explanation for every complex experience.

In the past, someone might feel hollow, cry at sunsets, find farming meaningless, and want to go far away. This is a complex state mixed with existential nihilism, physical fatigue, dissatisfaction with the status quo, and a metaphysical longing.

Now we may quickly call it “depression,” “anxiety,” or “burnout.” A name can be an entry point to professional help and should not be casually dismissed, but it does not automatically explain a person’s whole situation.

When we say “I am anxious,” it is worth asking at the same time: how long has it lasted, is it affecting sleep and daily life, is professional support needed, and are there parts of one’s routines, work environment, or relationships that can change? Medical and situational explanations can both be true; neither replaces the other.

The second cost of naming: it can make us stop asking too soon.

The problem is not using diagnostic or psychological vocabulary. It is using it as a universal lid. Treating “social anxiety” or “procrastination” as throwaway labels can hide more specific difficulties too. A good name should help someone see a problem and get help, not excuse everyone else from understanding it.

Magic Words at Work

If naming at a personal level still carries some helpless self-protection, then in business and workplaces, naming turns into outright "dark magic" that manipulates reality.

Here, language is carefully designed to reshape cognition and even twist moral judgment.

A familiar example for programmers is "sprint".

In agile development, we call a two-week development cycle a "Sprint". In track and field, a sprint means unleashing all power in a short time, reaching top speed, and then—this is important—rest. No athlete can sprint continuously without stopping.

But in big tech, one "Sprint" is immediately followed by the next. By naming normalized, high-intensity labor as "sprint", management skillfully implants an illusion of "short-term struggle, immediate victory". You feel like an athlete; in reality you are just a part on a conveyor belt.

Consider another word: "optimization".

When a company decides to lay people off, it rarely says: "We will fire these thousand people because management made bad decisions and cash is tight." It says: "We are optimizing the organizational structure."

"Firing" is brutal; it involves real families, mortgages, and tears. "Optimization" is neutral, mathematical, even positive. It suggests removing redundancy and improving efficiency.

Through naming, brutal reality can become abstract. Decision makers signing documents process “data,” while the people affected must deal with rent, care work, and finding the next job. That distance between two languages is what needs to be seen.

The third cost of naming: it strips things of moral qualities and emotional weight, allowing us to accept absurdity with a clear conscience.

Call "overtime" a "flexible work arrangement"; call "exploitation" a "blessing"; call "consumerist traps" a "lifestyle upgrade". Every new term is invented to open a backdoor in our cognitive firewall, letting in concepts we would otherwise reject.

Naming as a Dimensionality Reduction Strike

Back to programming. When designing interfaces, we always pursue abstraction. The essence of abstraction is to ignore details and extract commonalities.

Naming is the abstraction interface through which humans perceive the world.

The world is high-dimensional, continuous, full of impurities and details. Language is low-dimensional, discrete, standardized.

When we name a complex thing with a simple word, we are carrying out a "dimensionality reduction strike".

We gain efficiency. Just like calling sort() in code, we don't need to know how quicksort swaps elements; we only need the result. In life, we use labels to filter information quickly, judge friend and foe quickly, and make decisions quickly.

But we also lose the real.

Things that cannot be named—wild grass growing between labels, logic that doesn't fit grammar—are automatically filtered out by our cognitive system. Like someone who recognizes only the three primary colors—red, yellow, blue—who is destined to never appreciate Monet's water lilies.

Laozi warned us two thousand years ago: "The name that can be named is not the eternal name."

Wittgenstein said: "The limits of my language mean the limits of my world."

We live in a cage built by vocabulary, yet we think the sky we see through the bars is the whole of it.

Epilogue

Next time you are eager to name a feeling, define a relationship, or write those grand and hollow words in a weekly report, pause for one second.

Try to stare at the thing itself.

Feel the trembling called “anxiety,” and take seriously whether it needs help; understand the gaze called “ambiguity”; examine the action called “empowerment.”

After stripping away the name, can you still recognize it?