and in the case of “the Creator,” the name is the One named together with His act. Moreover, their claim that the act of creation is identical with what is created, rather than an act subsisting in His Essence, is a weak position contrary to that of the majority of Muslims, as has been explained at length elsewhere.

It is thus clear that all that can be conceded to those who say, “The name is the One named,” is that when the names of things occur in speech, what is intended is the things named. No rational person disputes this. It does not mean that the word ism (name), spelled “alif, sīn, mīm,” refers to the individual.

As for their citation of Labīd’s words:

“For a year; then the name of peace be upon you both,”

he means then uttering and mentioning this name, which constitutes the intended greeting. It is as though he had said, “Then peace be upon you.” He does not mean that peace comes upon the two of them without anyone uttering it and mentioning its name. The greeting of peace is itself an utterance: unless someone utters and mentions it, it does not occur.

Some of them have cited Sībawayh’s statement: “Verbs are patterns derived from the wording of the events expressed by nouns, and are formed to refer to what has passed and what has not yet occurred.” This provides no evidence for their claim, because by “noun,” “verb,” and the like, Sībawayh means verbal expressions. This is the terminology of grammarians: they named expressions after the meanings they convey. Thus they called qāma (he stood), yaqūmu (he stands), and qum (stand!) fi‘l (verb, literally “act”), although the act is the movement itself. They therefore named the expression denoting it after it.

Likewise, when they speak of “an inflected noun” or “an indeclinable noun,” they mean the expression, not the thing named. When they say, “This noun is the subject,” they mean that it is the subject grammatically—that is, the verb is predicated of it. By the word “nouns,” Sībawayh did not mean the things named, as they claimed. Had he meant that, his grammatical system would have broken down.