My rose has a last name and it isn't M-e-y-e-r

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other word would smell as sweet."

--From Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)

All names and words are metaphors. A word illicits in the mind of the one who hears it a particular object which the hearer has been conditioned to associate with the word. Were it not for that association, however, the word would have no meaning. A word stands in the place of the concrete thing to which it refers and is in that sense a metaphor.

Names, likewise, have no meaning apart from the persons they're attached to. Last night I learned the name of my noname friend.... Update 2/4/07: These intervening lines had to go too, but the rest is good.

(The photo was taken by placing my digital camera up to the eyepiece of a small telescope pointed accross the yard at a rose.)