The idea of a legal name not existing is quite interesting as someone who has never gone by the name on their various legal documents. One thing that I couldn’

The idea of a legal name not existing is quite interesting as someone who has never gone by the name on their various legal documents. One thing that I couldn’t stop thinking as I read is that the review doesn’t get into what the “thing” is that a name refers to. There’s this assumption that a human is a single unitary object but in reality we are composed of billions of cells, all with slightly different genetic code (in the case of regular mutation) or completely different genetic code (in the case of biome and virome). Which of those cells does my name refer to? What if I have cancer or am pregnant? Are those cells also using the same name…until they aren’t? The world is so multifaceted and fractal in nature but we sometimes have to put things into boxes with names to make sense of them and their relationship to the rest of the world. Those boxes aren’t facts or truths so much as they are generally agreed upon simplifications that make existing in a society possible. They can also change.