Abstract
The cosmologies contained in the excavated texts from the Warring States period, such as Taiyi sheng shui太一生水, Heng Xian恆先, Fan wu liu xing凡物流形 or Huangdi sijing黃帝四經, shed a new light on the role names in early Chinese thought. Names seem to play an important part in constitution and individuation of phenomena (wu物).
Given the temporary character of all boundaries between phenomena within the cosmos regarded as One, a name provides provisional stability and integrity of a thing, thus allowing people to navigate the ever-changing world. As such, names not only form one's direct experience but also one's pre-understanding and expectations towards future reality.
They become a "task to be fulfilled". Names are thus constitutive of what there is, but also what there is to be.
From this point of view, the idea of matching ming 名with shi實 is not so much about correspondence of words to objective realities, but rather about bringing one's language-based pre-understanding to fulfilment. The above texts bring about the realisation that one's reality is inevitably language-based, and therefore dependent on the prevailing discourse, but knowing this, it is also possible to rise above language and become an active co-creator of the discourse.