This project is a collaboration between the University of Poitiers and the University of Utrecht, for which we have been awarded a Van Gogh travel grant. It aims to investigate the meaning of names and the act of inscribing names in sacred spaces in the Middle Ages. In this period, many nominal inscriptions were written in churches in order to identify the saints whose relics were enclosed inside tombs and altars, the artists or donors who contributed to the works of art, the persons depicted in the pictorial narratives on the walls, and the Christians who visited the cult sites and who were buried there. Combining epigraphy, palaeography, art history and history we aim to understand the reasons, circumstances and assumptions underlying the act of inscribing names and its relation to other acts of writing.