I wish to consider proper names and nounphrases with the definite and indefinite articles, 'the F' and 'an F', in their use in referring. Some such uses result in what are commonly called 'identity statements', in which the copula is termed the 'is' of identity, marked off from the 'is' of predication. I hold that we do not need to locate the difference between identity statements and others of the form FA is B1 in a distinction between two copulas. It lies rather in the different uses of the phrase following the one copula, the phrase occupying the predicate position in the sentence. To begin with, then, I need to make a sharp distinction between the syntactic or grammatical notion of position, and the notion of use or occurrence. The latter, when used to mark referring and non-referring uses, is, I will argue, semantic. The difference in such uses is not simply a pragmatic one of interpretation. Geach suggested that the copula need not be treated as itself the source of the change in the force of 'is' when a definite or indefinite nounphrase in predicate position is replaced by a proper name. There is not a special copula, but a different use of the predicate expression.' Whereas a proper name here is always, he said, a referring expression, a definite or indefinite nounphrase such as 'the murderer of Smith' or 'a murderer' does not occur referentially in this position, but predicatively or attributively. The predicative use is so-called paronymously from a nounphrase's being characteristically so used in predicate position. I wish to claim, however, that it need not always be so used there (though it often is). The same expression may be used in that very same predicate position referentially. It is sentences with nounphrases in this position used referentially which are commonly called statements of identity. But a referential use is characteristic of a nounphrase in subject position. Once again, terms can there be used predicatively. 'Referentially', in fact,