The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name.

In the Decision Clarity Consulting decision-making methodology, defining terms is one of the critical steps necessary for effective decision-making to occur, especially when a team is involved, even more so when the team members are unknown to one another, and most critically when the team members come from different cultures and languages. In that context, I was delighted when I came across this saying, described as an old Chinese saying: "The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name," validating pithily that otherwise dry technical step in a methodology.

That's a great statement with a high value to word count ratio. But really? An old Chinese saying?

Google is my friend. Very quickly I find it attributed to Confucius which is hardly a confidence builder. Like Mark Twain, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, and a handful of others, Confucius is one of your go-to guys when you have a saying you want to attribute without having to research.

But then, sure enough, in Chapter III of the Analects via Wikiquote):

名正才能言順 - If names be not correct, language is not in accordance with the truth of things.

Also paraphrased as "The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name."

There are indeed giants upon whose shoulders we stand.