Research suggests that some mammals and birds use vocal labels for other individuals, but not all scientists agree on how to interpret the evidence.
Dolphins do seem to assign these whistles to other individuals and to match the whistles to others in a more symbolic way, Kelly Jaakkola, a cognitive psychologist at the Dolphin Research Center in Florida, told Live Science. Research shows that dolphins whistle to identify each other within complex social systems and while cooperating on tasks.
"They sound a little bit like a giant cat purring," Michael Pardo, a behavioral ecologist at Colorado State University and first author of the study, told Live Science. Elephants tended to approach speakers more quickly, and vocalize more in response, when their "name" was played.
Sign up for our newsletter(Image credit: Marilyn Perkins / Future)Playback experiments have also suggested that spectacled parrotlets (Forpus conspicillatus), small parrots native to parts of South and Central America, use vocal labels for other parrotlets.
"Parrots certainly pick up a lot of things from humans — they don't necessarily know what it means in a human linguistic context, but they know when to say it," Lauryn Benedict, a biologist at the University of Northern Colorado and first author of the study that surveyed parrot owners, told Live Science.
Elephants, like these at the Samburu National Reserve in Kenya, may use low rumbling sounds that are unique to each individual. (Image credit: Michael Pardo)
Claiming an animal noise is a name, as humans define it –– a specific, symbolic vocal label attached to an individual –– is complicated.
However, she noted that we can't generalize any one interpretation to all species.
In a July 2026 paper, Jaakkola and colleagues proposed three minimum criteria to apply across species: individual reference, meaning the call is designated for one particular individual; symbolic representation, meaning the name stands for a specific individual in the user's mind; and shared meaning, where at least two individuals associate the name with that individual.
"It is a big claim when you call something a name," Jaakkola said. "Our goal here was to create a unified framework … to start looking at this question more systematically."
Why are names useful?
The behavior seems present in very different lineages, so it may have evolved separately multiple times, which can tell scientists about the evolution of language among complex social pressures, Pardo said.
Related mysteriesBy studying whether animals use names, scientists can learn about the cognitive abilities necessary for abstract mental representation of other individuals. "For humans, names are such a part of our individuality and our sense of self, that if animals have names and respond to those names, that suggests they could have a sense of self … and of other individuals and their individuality," Benedict said.
Pardo agrees that more evidence would confirm these behaviors in more species, but he suspects a lot of animals may be calling each other by name.
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