In January 1970, 29-year-old philosopher Saul A. Kripke gave three lectures in Princeton, in which he criticised several well-established theories of meaning and drew radical conclusions for the metaphysics of possible worlds. For example, although we usually take ‘Aristotle’ to be the name of an eminent Greek philosopher, there are possible worlds where Aristotle has not become a philosopher; it is also possible that Aristotle does not exist at all. However, according to Kripke, not everything is possible: it is necessary that Aristotle is not a cat, but a human being and has some other essential properties (if he exists). The lectures were transcribed and eventually published as a slim book under the title Naming and Necessity, which is now one of the most cited classics of philosophy. While it covers many core topics of both philosophy of language and metaphysics, it is still very readable. In this seminar, we will discuss the book and a few other texts of authors who are criticised by Kripke (Russell, Searle) or elaborate on Kripke’s ideas (Papineau, Putnam).