What does shakespeare mean when he says a rose any name smells just as sweet?

In Shakespeare's play Romeo and Juliet, Juliet says, "What's in a name? that which we call a rose by any other word would smell as sweet." She means that the essence of a thing does not depend on its name. A rose would smell just as sweet if it were called by another name. This is similar to the saying, "Don't judge a book by its cover." Just because something has a certain name does not mean that it is good or bad. We should not let names fool us. We should look at the thing itself to see what it is really like.