Namespace Clashes

There are some disagreements that are really about naming: the two parties could live and let live about the underlying substance, but one or both get very upset if the others claim a given name.

For example, some religious tensions are like this: some religions would be fine to live-and-let-live with Minority Y if they would "admit" that they're just an unrelated group with no true claim to be X-ian, but are adamantly anti-Y if Yers are claiming the label X.

Or take what is now the Republic of North Macedonia, whose applications to join NATO and the EU were stalled for a long time over a dispute about what name they could/couldn't claim, rather than about whether the-polity-this-name-points-at could be a member.

Personally I feel this way about American Cheese. It's not something I want to eat, but I could live-and-let-live if it came by a different name. But the fact that A.C. is identified as Cheese 1) makes my life much more difficult, because I get into complex negotiations at delis over whether something containing "cheese" actually contains cheese, and 2) just feels philosophically wrong.

To the extent that there's a lesson here, it's that maybe occasionally a fight can be solved very easily just by changing something's name. I doubt this is actually useful very often, because it would only be true in the case that one side cares passionately about the name and the other is completely unbothered, and in such a case it's unlikely it would have become a big deal in the first place. But if you realize you're in such a case and therefore fighting about nothing but names then voila, problem solved.