Lynn asked:

Why do they call a shoe, a shoe, and not a refrigerator?

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There is a story of some woman who once asked an astronomer, "How did astronomers know that
the planet Jupiter was called "Jupiter?" What is the answer to that question? It is, I think, that they
didn't know. They just called Jupiter by the name "Jupiter."

Of course, there were historical reasons. For example, Jupiter was the chief of the Roman Gods, and
Jupiter was the largest of the planets. (One of Mozart's symphonies was called "Jupiter" for a similar
reason.)

What is important is to distinguish between language and what language is about, the world.
Language is conventional. That is to say it is a (tacit) agreement among the users of the language to
call things by certain terms. We call a shoe by the term "shoe." But the French call shoes, "soliers"
(male shoes) and "chaussures" (female shoes) (And, if you are really interested, the French word for
refrigerator is "re'frigerateur.") But there is nothing about shoes that call for their being called "shoes,"
although there are causes which are discovered by etymologists who trace the history of words. A
very interesting subject.

Important question.

Kenneth Stern

We could have called a refrigerator a shoe because names are arbitrary, although a lot of our
language is based upon or derived from Latin, and to this extent it is shaped historically.

A name is arbitrary because it is simply a symbol which acquires cultural currency. Most names stand
for things and concepts. Names for things can change. For instance, we used to use the word
refrigerator but now we tend to shorten it to fridge and there is no reason why this might not change
completely to something such as "cooler". We often adopt American terms for objects and give up the
English ones. Names for things can change and this is, in part, because they refer to objects so they
stand for something with a determinate description. But when we think of concepts, which are
abstract, such as red or good, it is difficult to imagine this sort of change. When we describe
something as "good" in a non-moral sense, we might use the Americanism "ace" but we don't give up
"good" and "ace" is already dropping out of usage. Refrigerator is a descriptive name, as is cooler, so
it might be that we can change the name by using a term with a like meaning and there is no like
meaning for "red" and "good".

Alternatively, this could be explained by means of reference and determinacy. A name picks out
objects of a particular sort so we can use more than one name to refer to an object because what the
object is like provides a determinate definition. If I adopt the term "cooler" for a fridge, I can explain
what I'm doing without using the word "fridge" by describing the object. It is explanatory to say that I'm
now using the word "cooler" for the thing we use to keep our food cool. We don't have determinate
definitions of concepts. If I use different terms for red or good, the only way to explain this is by saying
that by "rue", for instance, I mean red. Theories of meaning aim to explain what we mean when we
use a word. In the light of your question, it seems to me to be a good starting point to sort out types of
word rather than focusing on the meaning of "meaning" or what it is to mean something by a whole
proposition. This is what Aristotle was doing in the Categories.

Rachel Browne