If Animals Give Each Other Names, Is Naming Really Uniquely Human?

The idea of naming animals sparked debate in the 1950s when Jane Goodall began her groundbreaking research on chimpanzees in Tanzania’s Gombe National Park. Instead of assigning the animals numbers or codes, Goodall gave them names. She believed the chimpanzees were individuals with distinct personalities. The emotions she observed in them—joy, frustration, anger, happiness, and sorrow—were strikingly similar to those of humans.

For Goodall, naming them was only logical. However, this approach caused an uproar in the scientific community. At the time, anthropomorphism—the attribution of human traits to animals—was considered a cardinal sin in objective animal research.

Yet modern studies reveal that naming isn’t exclusive to humans; animals seem to do it too. Research shows that animals may assign specific identifiers to each other—and perhaps even to humans or other species in their surroundings. For example, elephants and dolphins use distinct sounds to refer to specific individuals within their groups. Similarly, studies on white-tufted marmosets demonstrate that these primates use unique calls to address one another, functioning much like names in human communication.

These findings challenge the notion that naming is a uniquely human behaviour. Instead, they suggest that animals, too, recognise individuality in ways we are only beginning to understand.