name names | Idiomator

Meaning: (idiomatic)Toidentifyspecificpeople, especially people involved inmisdeedsor othersecretiveactivity.Synonyms:inform,grass up,snitch;see alsoThesaurus:rat out1820March, [Walter Scott], chapter X, inThe Monastery. A Romance.[…], volume II, Edinburgh:[…]Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown,[…]; and forArchibald Constable and Co., andJohn Ballantyne,[…],→OCLC,page307:"Pr'ythee, peace, man," said Avenel; "what need ofnaming 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,page164:Theynamed names—names which I shall not record here.1953May 25, “West Germany: Panthers in the Streets”, inTime:Henamed names; the whole gang was rounded up, and all were sentenced to two years in reform school.2008May 18,Clark Hoyt, “Journalism From the Bottom of the Boat”, inNew York Times, retrieved16 June 2011:Sometimes it is not the journalist who is in peril but the subject of a story, andnaming namescan leave both the reporter and the reader uneasy.

Examples:

EN: I prefer not to name names, but let him not mess with me.
ES: Prefiero no decirlo, pero que no se cruce en mi camino.
EN: I don't name names.
ES: No digo nombres.
EN: Charleston wouldn't name names, but my guess is that same Kitty Collins.
ES: Charleston no dijo nombres, pero creo que se trata de Kitty Collins.
EN: Give up, name names.
ES: Se entregue. Y nos diera nombres.
EN: - All right, I'll name names.
ES: - Está bien. Diré los nombres.
EN: I can name names of politicians this guy'd be happy to drive the car.
ES: Puedo decir nombres de políticos para los que este tipo trabajaría de chofer.
EN: - Can you name names?
ES: - ¿No puede darnos nombres?
EN: -Can you name names?
ES: - ¿Me puedes decir quién es?
EN: - And name names, that's what!
ES: - Con nombres, eso hará.
EN: But if I heard correctly, your friend didn't name names.
ES: Pero si he oído bien vuestro amigo no ha dado los nombres de los conjurados.
EN: I don't want to name names, but this man's reputation lives on today.
ES: No quiero dar nombres, pero la reputación de este hombre todavía sigue viva.
EN: And the poor workers are too scared to name names.
ES: Pero los trabajadores tienen miedo de dar los nombres.
EN: You had to name names.
ES: Tuvo que dar nombres.
EN: I can't name names, but let's just say that there's a senior citizen's community in a southern state that's in the market for a hockey team.
ES: No puedo dar nombres, pero parece que hay un grupo de pensionistas en un estado del sur que busca un equipo de hockey.
EN: I'll name names.
ES: Diré los nombres.

Note: the examples for non latin scripts have a high likelihood of mistakes, we do not own any of this data and it is sourced from Wiktionary, the NLLB database and Opensubtitles. Please help us improve this by contributing correct examples. We will be working to fix this issue over time however it is a bigger issue due to the the difficulties in dealing with non latin scripts and grammatical structures(non-romantic/european languages have lower resources as well ).