as names reduces a set of attributes and their values to just the names.  For example, consider the expression

{animal, food, mite, mould, pollen} in range [50, 5000]

This might have as its value for a particular case the attributes and ranges

Dog (65.11), Birch (63.60), Cat (52.1) and Timothy (52.1)

If we now apply the as names function we get

Dog, Birch, Cat and Timothy