Semantic externalism (the thesis that semantic values are, at least in part, determined by non-representational relations between language users and their environment, both natural and social) is presented here in historical perspective. According to the proposed reconstruction, the genealogy of the thesis advanced by Hilary Putnam in his classical paper 'The meaning of "meaning"' (1975) harks back to Bertrand Russell's 1903-1914 views in the philosophy of language (in particular, to Russell's account of the semantics of singular terms). The thesis was then gradually articulated in the criticism of so-called 'descriptivist' accounts of reference which was an output of Ruth Barcan Marcus's seminal work in quantified modal logic, and which has since been expanded and refined by the likes of Keith Donnellan, David Kaplan and, above all, Saul A. Kripke. To the latter is due, in particular, the introduction of the notion of rigid designation - a notion which, extended to natural kind words, would finally pave the way for the full-fledged statement of semantic externalism in Putnam's locus classicus.

Keywords: meaning: intension and extension, singular terms, direct reference, rigid designation, kind words.