Impairment of naming is a ubiquitous problem in aphasia, whether caused by stroke or neurodegenerative disease. Focal lesions in frontal, temporal, parietal, or even occipital cortex result in errors in naming pictures, the most commonly tested language task in the neurological exam. Furthermore, all variants of primary progressive aphasia (PPA) initially present with naming errors. However, there are many different types of naming errors that might reflect disruption of distinct cognitive processes underlying naming and might reflect damage to different parts of the brain or different etiologies of aphasia. Here I review evidence that (1) distinct patterns or distributions of naming error types reflect distinct cognitive deficits underlying naming, and  (2) the affected cognitive process underlying naming reflects damage to different areas of brain damage, irrespective of the etiology. However, I also review evidence that semantic coordinate errors (e.g. dog named as cat) can reflect disruption of different cognitive processes or damage to several different neural regions.