Calling Things by Their Right Names

Confucius on names

The line attributed to Confucius, “The beginning of wisdom is calling things by their right names”, where it comes from in the Analects, and Ted Gioia quoting it against corporate language about art.

The beginning of wisdom is calling things by their right names.

— attributed to Confucius

Names can be important. A thing called by the wrong name gets handled as the wrong thing.

Source

The line is a paraphrase. The idea is the rectification of names (zhengming) in the Analects, book 13, chapter 3. A disciple asks what Confucius would do first if he were given the government of the state of Wei, and Confucius answers that he would correct the names. In James Legge’s translation: “If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things. If language be not in accordance with the truth of things, affairs cannot be carried on to success.”

Ted Gioia

Don’t Trust People Who Talk Like This, by Ted Gioia on The Honest Broker, 14 October 2026, quotes the line. Gioia collects the words media executives use for creative work: films and music as “content”, a studio “positioned to win in every single vertical”, AI as a way to “eliminate lower-value human capital”. He reads that vocabulary as a sign of how the speakers treat artists, and asks for plain, accurate language instead.