name names

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name names (third-person singular simple present names names, present participle naming names, simple past and past participle named names)

1. (idiomatic) To identify specific people, especially people involved in misdeeds or other secretive activity.

   Synonyms: inform, grass up, snitch; see also Thesaurus:rat out

   • 1820 March, [Walter Scott], chapter X, in The Monastery. A Romance. […], volume II, Edinburgh: […] Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, […]; and for Archibald Constable and Co., and John Ballantyne, […], →OCLC, page 307:

     "Pr'ythee, peace, man," said Avenel; "what need of naming names, so we understand each other? [...]"

   • 1918, Henry B[lake] Fuller, On the Stairs, Boston, Mass., New York, N.Y.: Hougton Mifflin Company; Cambridge, Mass.: The Riverside Press, →OCLC, part V, section III, page 164:

     They named names—names which I shall not record here.

   • 1953 May 25, “West Germany: Panthers in the Streets”, in Time:

     He named names; the whole gang was rounded up, and all were sentenced to two years in reform school.

   • 2008 May 18, Clark Hoyt, “Journalism From the Bottom of the Boat”, in New York Times, retrieved 16 June 2011:

     Sometimes it is not the journalist who is in peril but the subject of a story, and naming names can leave both the reporter and the reader uneasy.

• informant

• “name names”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.