Ontology

Now what is a name? A name is first and foremost an ontology. “On” is the Greek word for “being.” Ontology is the branch of metaphysics that concerns itself with the nature of “being” and “existence.” But according to The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, “ontology” also has another meaning in the field of Artificial Intelligence:

“An explicit formal specification of how to represent the objects, concepts
and other entities that are assumed to exist in some area of
interest and the relationships that hold among them.”
(Source: The Free On-line Dictionary of Computing, © 1993-2004 Denis Howe )

So in this sense, a name is a way of representing a unit of existence in a mind. In the Bible, it was God who first got this ball rolling:

Gen 1:3-5
3 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light.
4 And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness.
5 And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.
(KJV)

But it was Adam, the first man, who was allowed to continue in this work.

Gen 2:19
19 And out of the ground the LORD God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.
(KJV)

As God created Adam’s outer world, so Adam himself was allowed to create his inner world. It is not so much “out of sight, out of mind” as “lack of name, out of mind.” It is a name that causes a thing not to perish from a human mind long after it has left sight or even existence. This is the significance of a name, and it was something that was not lost on ancient people:

Deut 25:5-6
5 If brethren dwell together, and one of them die, and have no child, the wife of the dead shall not marry without unto a stranger: her husband's brother shall go in unto her, and take her to him to wife, and perform the duty of an husband's brother unto her.
6 And it shall be, that the firstborn which she beareth shall succeed in the name of his brother which is dead, that his name be not put out of Israel.
(KJV)

And a name plays a fundamental part in our ultimate salvation:

Rev 3:5
5 He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment; and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels.
(KJV)

John 3:18
18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.
(KJV)

A name is a serious thing.