Reference

How does the name 'David Chart' come to refer to me, and not to somebody else? (Ignoring, for now, the complication that there seems to be another David Chart.) How does the word 'cow' come to refer to all and only cows, and not to horses, sheep, or nuclear power stations?

This is another philosophical problem which is much harder to solve than it seems it should be.

Template Theories

Template theories say that a word is associated with a description, and refers to the thing or things that match that description.

Causal Theories

Causal theories say that all uses of a word are linked by a causal chain to some initial act of dubbing, and refer to whatever was picked out in that dubbing act.