This work alone, should be reason enough to study and learn the Greek Language. It is very unfortunate that even the best translation will not do this work justice.

I read the book in English and it is impossible to capture the purpose why Plato wrote it. Words in Greek are not just a bundle of letters. it is much more than that. and diving into the analysis of words and their origins and their meanings, takes you to a whole new world of understanding.
Words are synthetic of primary words which in turn were crafted carefully using specific letters, to trigger emotions.
Elements feelings and areas bare names of Gods which themselves have whole histories attached to them (Sun, Moon, Ocean, Sky, Love, Nightmare Europe, Asia etc etc).

Unfortunately this book cannot be fully understood if not studied in Greek.

MQ: Does correctness of names (ὀρθότης ὀνόματος) come from convention and agreement (συνθήκη καὶ ὁμολογία) or does it come from nature (φύσις)? Is there an innate/inherent connection between names and their referents (and if so, by what criteria were these names found/made)? Is it more accurate to think of a name as an instrument or as a likeness? If a name is an instrument, what is that instrument used for, and how is the instrument suited to its task? What is the role of language in platonic dialectic? Is language necessary for dialectic?


M: focus on individual words; words as instruments of division

D:
ὄνομα = λόγου σμικρότερον μόριον; = ὄργανον τι (388a)
ὀνόματος ὀρθότης = ἥτις ἐνδείξεται οἷόν ἐστι τὸ πρᾶγμα (428e, Socrates w/Cr)

N: primary/secondary substance (as not having predication in Categoriae); etymology; language of gods; philosophy of language;

I: loom/weaving; painting

P: ἔρως --> dialecticians (399d)

AR:
-If name is by nature, how? Likeness? Instrument suited to task? Imitation? (comparison w/ painting: 424a-b) Embodiment? Contains part of the nature of the thing (cf. Stoics)? Reveals it? Separates it out? (cf. 388b-c)
-What does it mean for a name to have a form (εἶδος, 390c); it doesn’t just embody the form of the thing; the name itself has a form that must be cast in litterae.
- Why are the following all said to be who use a name well: teacher (388b); dialectician (390c); sophist(?);
- Language of the gods (391d-e; 400d); names given (not necessarily the same thing as divine language) by gods (397b-c)
- Criteria for the correctness of names ! How can a name be incorrect?
- When does hiddenness in naming become falseness/lying? When/why is it appropriate? (cf. 395e). When does speech reveal and when does it conceal (and when is each appropriate?) 408c
- Who ‘knows about names’ enough to not be confused by the additions/removal of some letters? Is there a point past which even this person would not recognise a name? (394b-c)
- Name-givers/makers, human and divine (only law-givers?) 401b, 411b, 424a-b (the one who imitates reality in speech, like a painter does in paint, etc)
- Do names imitate/reflect/contain reality OR the name-giver's interpretation of it?
- How do you know when you’ve gotten to an elemental word (422a-b)
- How is a name an imitation of reality? (423c, 425d-e)
- How does the account of name-giving via imitation compare with the Stoic idea of the lekton embodied in a word?
- Is there a difference between lying and not speaking at all? (429-430, 431)
- Is the semiotics here wholly based on likeness? To what extent are they trying to say that a sign (word) has to be like the thing it signifies in order for signification to work? (cf. Aristotle de Int)
- What are all the possible different ways for a semiotics to work?

There is certainly a lot to be said about the concept of naming. Plato attempts to frame the discourse as an argument: are names arbitrary and chosen only by convention, or is there always a single, true name that captures the essence of the thing it is describing?

The reality is that the answer is unclear. Plato touches on arguments in support of both. Most of this argument is based on discussing the etymology of Greek names, including those of the gods. We must take the translators at their word at this point, since we have no way of knowing whether the analysis is correct or not. The several layers of translation (in time, place and language) must certainly muddy the waters there.

If anything, this book gives you a glimpse into the form of Ancient Greek etymology, and how great a part religion played in philosophical discourse.

Cratylus is about the process of naming things, and the manner of setting about doing this. As always, Plato's style is compelling, but he lived in a time and a culture where the meaning of personal names was reflected in the names themselves. This is not often the case today, and so the logic of his argument loses some of its force. However, the idea that knowing the name of something gives us power over the thing is an old idea with a long and fascinating history, and Plato's book speaks to that argument as well. As someone who has always been fascinated by names, I found this book to be good reading, as well as moving me forward in my project to read more of Plato's texts.

Cratilo anticipa i dubbi che hanno condotto la linguistica a Ferdinand de Saussure, affrontando la delicata questione del rapporto fra le parole e le cose: sebbene l'argomentazione non sia affatto fluida e, al contrario di altri dialoghi platonici, non ci si possa appoggiare a qualche mito o a pagine di rara grandezza e nonostante diverse contraddizioni, si incontra qui una complessa prova di dialettica, che, per ammissione dello stesso Socrate, non può pervenire ad un risultato stabile.
http://athenaenoctua2013.blogspot.it/...

How do some strings of noise come to have meaning while others do not?
To tackle this problem is to understand the fundamental workings and structure of language, and from there grasp meaning itself. The most popular theory is that we choose a specific sound and agree upon a meaning, one we share for a given subject.

Plato considers this in the Cratylus, named after a radical follower of Heraclitus who famously said that because of constant flux we can't even step into the same river once. The two other characters in this dialogue are Socrates and Hermogenes. When the dialogue begins, Hermogenes and Cratylus have already been arguing about words and their meaning. Hermogenes believes that any sound can have meaning attached to it, and with convention the name sticks. Cratylus disagrees, saying words are given meaning through nature.
So the argument revolves around the question: does each thing have a word for it which is correct by nature, or can anything be called by whatever word we want just by convention? Socrates enters the discussion by refuting Hermogenes’ conventional view with the points made by Cratylus who thinks everything has a correct or a true name. His reason is that, to use language is nothing but uttering the correct word or expression for what you are thinking about. A word in the proper sense is just an expression meaning what you’d like to say. So in his view there is no such thing as using language falsely.

Socrates compares words to tools, saying they both contain function being made for specific tasks. But wouldn’t that mean that sounds, like tools, can’t be used for any task that took our fancy? So how do we discern the proper words for real things? Socrates says the right word for something should somehow reveal its nature, and this he thinks is what Homer must have thought when composing his poetry. One quotation from the Iliad says that a river has one name used by the gods, and another used by humans. So Homer must have believed that the gods were using the true name, while humans used another because they lack a true understanding of the world.

If words really did reveal the nature of things, then we could discover the nature of things by producing etymologies of their correct names. However there are several problems with this. First of all, foreign words have crept into language, so no etymology is possible in these cases. Even worse for Socrates, the Greek of the 5th century BC more than likely experienced this change as well. Letters or syllables may also have been added or subtracted from certain words, so in some cases we may have to remove letters to discover the correct etymology. But there’s a bigger problem here. If I etymologise the word for health by saying that it's based on the word for 'wholeness', then why is the word for 'wholeness' necessarily a correct word? Each words meaning seems to simply be a function of the meanings of the words upon which it is based. So what makes any of those words revelatory of the natures of things? To stop this regress Socrates suggests there is a way for words to be natural representations or likenesses of the things they refer to, and this is onomatopoeia. He argues that if we take this idea seriously, we'll see that when words were originally bestowed upon things, the people who gave them were expressing certain ideas on the nature of things. An example he gives is of the Greek letter ῥῶ (rho) which is supposed to signify rapid change because the tongue vibrates when pronouncing it. More examples are given of this onomatopoeic code are given, and Socrates shows how the ancients used etymologies to create new words. Yet, even though this codifies meaning into language, it doesn't necessarily mean that the meaning is true, and this is the argument Socrates uses to refute Cratylus.

So far Socrates has been refuting Hermogenes' theory that language is entirely conventional. But now he points out to Cratylus that language may not be entirely natural either. Cratylus' argument comes into trouble with the corruption of words I mentioned earlier. Sometimes a letter may be added or removed from a word to make it easier to say, and when this happens people are still able to use the word to communicate meaning. So it can't be the case that true natural words function as words, there must also be a role for convention. Socrates thus takes a middle view between Hermogenes and Cratylus, words have their meaning both by nature and convention. So it's no surprise he rejects the most radical idea of Cratylus, namely that it's impossible to speak falsely, because a word must have meaning for the thing which it is about. Socrates suggested with his idea of onomatopoeia that words are likenesses of the things they mean. But with any likeness there is always going to be a mismatch between a thing and the representation of the thing. Similarly, it must be possible for me to apply a word to the wrong thing. The falsehood occurs because of a mismatch between the representation and what it is meant to represent. Words are mismatched with the things they are supposed to represent.

Thus by taking a middle ground between the conventionalism and naturalism, Socrates preserves two possible functions of language:

-Language conveys intention, and for this convention seems to be enough.
-Words may be able to reveal the natures of things.

Yet, even though meaning may be coded in language, it doesn't necessarily mean that the meaning is true. To learn whether it is true, we need to do something more than analyse the words assigned to the things around us. We need to understand whether the principles that guided that process are the right ones. But to have the correct principles for a word such as beauty, there needs to be a meaning which is not constantly shifting, otherwise we don’t have tangible knowledge of the actual thing itself, just reference points.

With both sides discussed, the dialogue ends with Socrates using the forms to refute the Heraclitean concept of language as flux. Though heavy-handed, with this dialogue Plato cements his position as the first pioneering genius of the philosophy of language (two millennia before any major interest would be taken in the subject).

Aunque es un texto corto, por momentos se vuelve bastante complejo de seguir para quienes, como yo, no tienen ninguna formación en griego antiguo. Las reflexiones sobre el rol de la etimología en la comprensión de la realidad de las cosas y las limitaciones del conocimiento a través del lenguaje me resultan muy sugerentes.

أولاً - و إن أتفقت مع الآراء المطروحة عن هذا الكتاب، و التي تقول بأن أفلاطون يدافع عن إصطلاحية اللغة ضد رأي كراتيلوس القائل بالثبات الماهوي للغة. ألا أن أفلاطون يبدأ الحوار بالسخرية من بروديكوس السفسطائي، و بروديكوس هو أول فيلسوف وضع فلسفة إجتماعية للغة حاول فيها إرجاع أصولها للعرف و الإتفاق عوضاً عن الوحي و المشيئة الإلهية. و لا تعني هذه السخرية بأني أظن بأن أفلاطون يتفق مع كراتيلوس في ثبات اللغة، بل أظن ربما هو رأى بأن اللغة و إن كانت بطبيعتها متغيرة إلا أنها ليست بتلك الدرجة من الأهمية بالنسبة له، فهي لا دخل لها بمُثُلِه و لا رابط لها بها، و لذلك نرى أفلاطون ينهي الحوار بكلامه المعتاد عن هذه المُثُل، و التشجيع على التركيز عليها عوضاً عن التركيز على عبث لغوي لا طائل منه يستطيع التحقق من طبيعته بأبخس دروس بروديكوس!.

و لا يجب أن يخفى أن المُثُل بطبيعة الحال ثابتة، و ذلك تشابه ظاهري مع رأي كراتيلوس في ثبات اللغة، و أيضاً بذكره -أي أفلاطون- المتكرر لهيراقليطوس هو تأكيد بأن و إن كانت آراء هيراقليطوس تتفق مع طبيعة اللغة و تصيب صميمها في تغيرها المستمر، ألا أن هذه الآراء تظل مع ذلك بعيدة عن المساس عن ما هو مهم، ألا و هو المُثُل.

و كأن أفلاطون يقول بهذه المحاورة: "نقطة لصالح من يقول بالتغير، و لكن يظل الثبات هو الحقيقي، و الحقيقي هو ما يهم".

ثانياً - وجدت في هذا الكتاب معلومة أو بالأحرى تكملة لمعلومة كانت لدي و لكنها كانت ناقصة. فمنذ عدة أشهر كنت أبحث في المتصفح عن أصل اسم زينب بعد أن أخبرتني إحدى قريباتي أثناء حديثي معها عن أن هذا الاسم مركب من جزئين: زين، و أب، أو بصورة أخرى، زينة أبيها. و مباشرة أرتبت من هذا التفسير الذي بدا في غاية الإصطناع. فالكلمتان المركبتان كلتاهما عربيتان، و الاسم زينب حسب معرفتي يمكن إرجاعه للقرن الثالث و بالتحديد لملكة تدمر زنوبيا. فكان هذا التفسير خارج الحسبان بالنسبة لي.
و أثناء بحثي وجدت نفس التفسير الذي قالته لي قريبتي يتكرر في الموضوعات التي تشرح أصل الاسم في المواقع و المنتديات، عدا قلة منها تذكر باستحياء و بإيجاز عن إن الاسم يمكن إرجاع أصله لزنوبيا ملكة تدمر، و بل يمكن أن يكون ذو أصل أغريقي - بحكم النفوذ الهيلينستي في تلك المنطقة في تلك الفترة من الزمن - [توضيح السبب من عندي و ليس من المواقع التي قرأتها].

و معنى الاسم بالأغريقية هو "الحياة التي يوهبها زيوس". وقفت على هذه المعلومة متحير في كيفية التصرف معها، فالمعلومة تقف عند هذا الحد و لا يوجد أي ذكر لمصدر يمكن الرجوع له. و بمعرفتي البسيطة جداً باللغة اليونانية حاولت البحث عن مختلف التراكيب الممكنة من الكلمات التي يمكن أن تخرج لي كلمة قريبة من اسم زينب، لكن المشكلة كانت في اسم زيوس نفسه، فهو لا يمكن أن يكون جزء من الاسم، فكلمة "حياة - live" نفسها تتكفل بالجزء الأول من اسم زينب، و الكلمة بالإغريقية هي "زينا - ζινα".
و المعلومة التي وجدتها في هذا الكتاب هي بأن هناك اسم آخر لزيوس، و هي كلمة ζινα نفسها. و بل أفلاطون يذكر وصف كامل للإله زيوس موضوع في تركيبة من الكلمات فيها ما يقارب اسم زينب: "Wherefore we are right in calling him Zena and Dia, which are one name, although divided, meaning the god through whom all creatures always have life.
"di on zen aei pasi tois zosin uparchei"
و المقطع الذي يقترب من اسم زينب هو "zen aei pasi".

δι ον ζινα πασι τοις ζοσινو ترجمة الجملة بالإغريقية ستكون υπαρχει.

للرجوع للفقرة: أنظر صفحة ٨٤ من نسخة مكتبة غوتينبرغ.

Fascinating philological dialogue focusing on the deities, philosophical and scientific terms. Socrates' analogy of the use of hand gestures to communicate the "essence" of a word was especially helpful toward understanding verbal development since my wife is a sign language interpreter. Some ASL signs obviously represent a recognizable quality of an object or action, whereas others seem to have no such qualitative relationship. Also, in the dialogue, there's some epistemology of the primary essence or quality (genus) necessary to the accuracy of naming to which Socrates qualifies the "legislator." This is the only thing I took issue with as the early development of language took place under a much more primitive social structure.

Κάθε έργο του Πλάτωνα που έρχομαι σε επαφή είναι μία αποκάλυψη! Πόσο ωραία πλέκει τη γνώση, με τέτοιο τρόπο [βήμα-βήμα] που το κάθε θέμα φαίνεται τόσο απλό αλλά και τόσο εντυπωσιακό.
Στον διάλογο αυτό, εξετάζει την προέλευση των ονομάτων. Δίνει σημασία στον ήχο των γραμμάτων και τη σύνθεση των λέξεων, διαχωρίζοντας όμως με σαφήνεια ότι άλλο το όνομα [η λέξη] του πράγματος-της έννοιας-του προσώπου και άλλο το πράγμα-έννοια-πρόσωπο καθαυτό.

A heavily satirical dialogue. Socrates argues language is historical, not arbitrary or metaphysical. Can we enjoy it as mocking deconstruction before the letter?

In diesem Dialog geht es um das Wesen der Sprache. Ist sie durch Konventionen begründet, kann also der Mensch genausogut Pferd genannt werden und umgekehrt? Oder gibt es eine wahre, "natürliche" Bedeutung? Sokrates beginnt mit einem Taschenspielertrick, wenn ein Satz als Ganzes wahr sei, dann doch wohl auch seine Teile, mithin auch das einzelne Wort.
Dann kommt eine ebenso lange wie größtenteils alberne "etymologische" Erklärung von Wörtern. Besonders natürlich, wenn man eine Übersetzung liest. Aber ich glaube nicht, dass im Griechischem die "Erklärung", dass Frau von "frisch" kommt, viel sinnvoller ist. Ein anderes Argument, besteht darin, dass die Götter teilweise andere Begriffe haben als die Menschen, z.B. wird ein Fluß "Xanthos" von Göttern genannt, von den Menschen "Skamandros", und der Begriff der Götter "offenbar" wahrer.
Immerhin gesteht Sokrates schließlich zu, dass die Ableitungen ein Ende haben müssen. Wenn "Gut" aus "gültig" und "Mut" abgeleitet ist, dann kann vielleicht Mut nicht abgeleitet werden. Solche Begriffe werden "Stammwörter" genannt. Soweit so gut.
Diese nun, und da wird es etwas interessanter, wurden nun von den "Gesetzgebern" aufgrund ihrer Ähnlichkeit zu den Dingen gebildet, und da sind wir bei Lautmalerei. Das "r" steht dann für sich bewegendes, wie reiten, das "u" für Rundes. Die Sprache, und hier kommt eine frühe Abbildtheorie ins Spiel, ist letztlich also den Dingen (nur) "ähnlich". Sonst würde sie die Dinge duplizieren. Und wir hätten z.B. zwei Kratylosse. Daraus, allerdings, schließt Sokrates, dass man, um zur Wahrheit zu kommen, "direkt" zu den Dingen dringen müsse und nicht via Wörtern. Und das ist, wie gerade bei Jürgen Trabant ("Europäisches Sprachdenken") gelesen, aber wie einem eigentlich der gesunde Menschenverstand sagt, der Grundirrtum der europäischen Sprachgeschichte.
Es geht nach Sokrates um das Schöne, nicht um einzelne schöne Dinge. Man kann natürlich sagen, dass mich die Sonne wärmt ist eine Wahrheit, die durch die Wörter "die Sonne wärmt mich" nur unzureichend dargestellt wird, aber eine etwas abstraktere Wahrheit wie die, dass man nicht zweimal in denselben Fluss steigen kann, kann nur durch diese Metapher (oder einer anderen) ausgedrückt werden. Ohne die Metapher auch der Gedanke nicht. Das allerdings, ist auch ein Glaubenssatz.