---
title: "The Rectification of Names"
sousTitre: "Why this column. The language of power inverts words—“reform” for dismantling, “costs” for wages, “adaptation” for submission. Twenty-five centuries before us, Confucius named the malady and the cure: if names are not correct, nothing can be accomplished. To reveal is to restore their meaning."
description: "Manifesto of the Unveiling column. The principle: returning words to their true meaning against their hijacking by technocratic language. The anchor: Confucius’s “rectification of names” (正名 zhèngmíng, *Analects* XIII.3)—when the word no longer corresponds to the thing, social order unravels. The lineage: Orwell, Klemperer, Hazan, Bourdieu, Barthes. The method: one word per article, its original meaning against its drift, across the languages we cover."
date: 2026-07-12
lang: en
tradition: transversal
auteurs: ["Confucius", "Eric Hazan"]
---
# The Rectification of Names

A word can be turned inside out. “Reform” comes to mean dismantling, “costs” a wage presented as a burden, “adaptation” the obligation to comply, “governance” the sidelining of all political decision. Each time, the word speaks of virtue while enacting its opposite. This column has but one purpose: to restore these words’ weight, and thereby restore the reader’s grip on what is being done to them. One word per article, its true meaning against its drift.

## The Name and the Thing

The problem is not new, and its clearest formulation is also the oldest. Confucius is asked what he would do first if he governed a state. His answer baffles his disciple: he would begin by *rectifying names*—正名, *zhèngmíng*. Then he unfolds the reason, like an implacable mechanism:

  
    If names are not rectified, then language will not be in accord with truth. If language is not in accord with truth, then things cannot be accomplished. […] If punishments are not just, then the people will not know how to move hand or foot.
  
  If names are not rectified, language no longer accords with truth. If language no longer accords with truth, then nothing can be accomplished. […] And if punishments are unjust, the people will not know where to place hand or foot.

*[正名 zhèngmíng]* Literally, “to make names correct.” For Confucius, the disorder of language is not a mere stylistic flaw: it is the primary cause of the world’s disorder. When the word no longer corresponds to the thing, everything built upon it—justice, customs, even daily gestures—falters in turn. Naming rightly is the inaugural task of government.

That is all there is to it. The false word is not a slip; it is an act: it severs language from the truth of things and, in doing so, makes common action impossible. We believe we are speaking of the same thing; we no longer can. This is precisely the effect sought by those who govern through words: not to convince, but to steal our hold.

## The Mechanics of Inversion

How is a word turned inside out? Most often through euphemism, the device that takes a reassuring term to cloak a reality that is not. Éric Hazan, who catalogued the language of contemporary power—his *LQR*, “lingua quintae respublicae,” modeled on Klemperer’s *LTI* dissecting the language of the Third Reich—lays out the rule:

> The other function of euphemism is to take an ordinary word, gradually drain it of meaning, and use it to conceal a void that might otherwise be unsettling.
>
> — **Eric Hazan**, *LQR: The Propaganda of Everyday Life*, ch. The Euphemism. éd. after the French original, Raisons d’agir, 2006.

Draining meaning, then using the hollowed-out word as a mask: the emptied term does not persuade through argument but disarms objection in advance. Who would dare oppose “reform,” “modernization,” or “social dialogue”? Dissent is disqualified in the very fold of the word. The power relation vanishes beneath a vocabulary of self-evidence—what Roland Barthes called *naturalization*: passing off as the natural course of things what is merely a historical decision, and thus reversible.

## What This Column Does

To unveil is not to ban words, nor to counter them with some “pure” language that does not exist. It is to refuse that they work behind our backs. The lineage is clear—Orwell and his Newspeak, Klemperer and his *LTI*, Hazan and his *LQR*, Bourdieu on the power of words, Barthes and his mythologies. So is the method:

- **One word per article.** We start with its current usage, the one that obscures.
- **Its true meaning**, established through etymology or a foundational text, cited *verbatim*—no assertion without a source.
- **The genealogy of the drift**: how, and by whom, the meaning was inverted.
- **Across languages.** viasophia appears in several languages; each word is examined in those we cover, to observe where the same hijacking operates and where it does not. The veil is not equally thick everywhere.

Restoring a word’s meaning is the modest, daily version of the rectification of names. Not a language police: a hygiene of attention. For as long as the name corresponds to the thing, action remains possible; the moment it conceals it, we are governed in the dark.

## Sources

- Confucius, *Entretiens (Lunyu) XIII.3* — Wing-tsit Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy, Princeton University Press, 1963, p. 40, trans. trad. anglaise Wing-tsit Chan ; rendu français maison
- Éric Hazan, *LQR. La propagande du quotidien* — Raisons d'agir, 2006, chap. « L'euphémisme »


Canonical source : https://viasophia.org/en/devoiler/2026-07-12-la-rectification-des-noms/