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It can be useful when considering a particular concept to start by turning to the Oxford English Dictionary. In the present case, the word I looked up — ‘label’ — yielded unexpected results. I found nine entries under ‘label, substantive’. The first and root meaning is ‘a narrow band or strip of linen, cloth, etc.’ After a number of obsolete uses we get to its meaning in heraldry — ‘a mark of cadency distinguishing the eldest son of a family and consisting in a band drawn across the upper part of the shield …’ the first step in the transition in meaning to the word's current figurative sense. The chief current sense we find under entry 7: ‘A slip of paper, cardboard, metal etc. attached … to an object and bearing its name, description or destination. Also figurative.’ But — and this is what I find interesting — the figurative sense emerges much more clearly through the verb form: ‘to describe or designate as with a label, to set down in a category.’ The first example here is from Robertson, 1853: ‘This foolish and wicked system of labelling men with names.’ As it had been thoughts about the element of arbitrariness in the practice of labelling which had sent me to the OED in the first place, this discovery shifted my associations to the title ‘The child behind the label’ away from static images