Abstract
The cosmologies contained in the excavated (so-called Huang-Lao黃老) texts from the late Warring States period, such as Taiyi sheng shui 太一生水, Heng Xian恆先 or Fan wu liu xing凡物流形, bring a new perspective to our understanding of the role names in the early Chinese thought. They attribute a special role to names, making them an integral part of the cosmological order.
Within the cosmos understood as one whole where things and phenomena arise only as a result of temporary boundaries, names represent yet another form of posing such boundaries, and therefore give rise to realities. The paper explores the ways how this special role of names is reflected in the above excavated texts (as well as in the related received texts such as Guanzi Xin shu chapters), shows how the underlying cosmology reverses the problem of naming from epistemological to ontological and explores the implications thereof for our understanding of the link between the 'Daoist' and 'Legalist' elements in the Huang-Lao texts.