The definite article that is used with names in varieties of Brazilian Portuguese and German is incompatible with restrictive apposition (*\*a Maria a doutora/\*die Maria die Doktorin* ‘the Maria the doctor), suggesting that it contributes to the interpretation of the name. These data support predicativism, or the view that names are definite descriptions composed of a determiner (null or overt) and a name predicate. However, they also underscore the need to revise the identity of the null determiner in predicativism since it allows for restrictive apposition (∅ *Maria the doctor*), unlike the definite article. This determiner is instead argued to be a silent form of the proprial article, which is morphologically distinct from the definite article in languages like Catalan and Northern Swedish and only appears with names. Like the null determiner in English, the proprial article in these languages also permits restrictive apposition (*na Maria la doctora/a Maria doktorn* ‘PROP Maria the doctor’). Predicativism should therefore be amended to reflect the possibility of different types of determiners with names, some of which encode a greater degree of definiteness than others.