This paper is about how to interpret and evaluate purported evidence for
predicativism about proper names. I aim to point out some underappreciated thorny
issues and to offer both predicativists and non-predicativists some advice about how
best to pursue their respective projects. I hope to establish three related claims: (1)
that non-predicativists have to posit relatively exotic, though not entirely implausible,
polysemic mechanisms to capture the range of data that predicativists have introduced
(Sects. 1, 2, 3); (2) that neither referentialism nor extant versions of predicativism can
offer a very plausible account of the interpretive possibilities for singular unmodified
definite descriptions containing names (Sects. 4, 5); and (3) that the most plausible
version of predicativism would treat bare names as non-anaphoric definite descriptions
(Sects. 6, 7, 8).

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• Names in strange places