Abstract
Literature is both the power and the enactment of the properties of language, but it realizes only some of them. The case of Rousseau shows that the proper name takes on three essential values for him, and constitutes one of the focal points of his work : 1) in the Discours sur les origines, it enables us to classify : operating distinctions without precision, it is an " empty form of difference " ; 2) in theÉmile, it is an epistemic operator : it proves the singularity of an individual, constitutes him or her as a model, and triggers his or her existence and the possibility of relating him or her to the world ; 3) in Julie, it enables recognition, in the double sense of the term : the novel makes the name the possibility of love, in keeping with the Petrarchan tradition, according to which one loves the beloved in his or her very name, but it also proposes a social anthropology of the name, insofar as the characters all have a name problem. Its transmission and reputation are not simply a label, but the object of a quest.
