There aren’t any nouns for some things—they just are

The expression “There aren’t any nouns for some things—they just are” captures the entity’s refusal to fit itself into familiar categories. Speaking through Bobbi to Gard, it describes names as labels applied in different places, useful as conventions but inadequate as definitions, and denies that Altair-4 is its home.

The Naming Problem

The explanation begins by unsettling the categories Gard might use to understand the speaker. It says there is no real Altair-4 in the sense Gard assumes, just as there are no Tommyknockers in any essential, properly named sense. Those terms arise because people attach names to things in particular places; the names vary, and none is especially accurate. The entity’s point is not that the labels are meaningless in conversation, but that a label should not be mistaken for an account of what something is.

Neither a People nor a Place of Origin

When Gard asks whether Altair-4 is where the entity and its kind come from, the answer overturns the premise of his question. The speaker says it is not from Altair-4, and that it is not a people, race, or species. Its brief reference to the familiar imagined arrival of Klaatu makes the distinction pointed: Gard should not expect a conventional alien population with a home world and leader. Altair-4 is instead described as a place where things are stored, usually things that are not alive—an attic, cold and dark. The comparison turns the supposed planetary origin into a metaphor for containment.

What the Expression Reveals

The line’s force lies in its contrast between nouns, which divide and classify, and existence, which the speaker presents as prior to human naming. Even “Tommyknockers” is explained as a name adopted because Gard returned from New Hampshire thinking and talking about them; elsewhere, the beings have been called other things. The expression therefore offers a narrow but consequential correction to Gard’s understanding: the entity is not a conventional species from a conventional world, and its identity cannot be recovered simply by finding the right label.