Confucius said fixing a broken government starts with fixing its words

Asked what he'd do first if put in charge of a state, Confucius answered: 'rectify the names.' If words don't correctly match reality, he argued, speech fails, actions misfire, and eventually justice and order collapse entirely. The idea — that calling things by their proper names is the foundation of social order — appears in Analects 13.3 and became a core concept in Confucian political philosophy.

— Confucius, The Analects — Book 13, Chapter 3, c. 5th century BCE