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what he calls the "essential nature" of the thing that the name would denote (if there were such a thing). This led medieval logicians to distinguish between what they called the quid nominis, or the "whatness of the name", and the underlying nature common to all the things it names, which they called the quid rei, or the "whatness of the thing". The name "hobbit", for example, is perfectly meaningful. It has a quid nominis, but one could not know the real nature of hobbits, and so the quid rei of hobbits cannot

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