"Propaganda"? I really don't know what you're trying to accomplish. You want to know if you can get the name of a lexical FROM the lexical. While it IS possible, it's a very rare task, and one which begs the question "why". Perhaps you're doing something that you should just be using a hash for. And, so what if Ruby can do it? What benefit is this ability going to get you? Yes, it's possible, but no, you probably shouldn't use it.