Characters without names.

[Yarglenurp]

Fight Club comes to mind.

And, taking a hard turn in another direction, Jim Carrey's character in The Cable Guy.

His name was Robert Paulson

 

[THBGato]

Curley's wife from "Of Mice and Men'.

Have you ever read Steinbeck's story "The Chrysanthemums"? It's kind of the flip of "Of Mice and Men" in this respect, as the rancher's wife is given a name (Elisa Allen) but the migrant tinker she interacts with is left unnamed.

 

[OffNSFW]

Wasn't there also some apocalyptic movie from the 80s where the main tough guy character was unnamed and only credited at the end as Nada?

John Carpenter's They Live, with Roddy Piper as, well, the guy from They Live.

If anyone hasn't seen it, it's the one with the sunglasses that reveal the authoritarian messages behind advertising and television broadcasts.

 

[TadOverdon]

 

[SkyBubble]

The Emergency Medical Hologram aka Doctor from Star Trek: Voyager
And equally Doctor Who.

I've had a few stories where I haven't bothered to name 'I'.

I almost never name a first-person narrator.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Stop necro-ing please.

 

[SkyBubble]

I have a character in one of my stories who is only called "the casting director."

 

[pink_silk_glove]

(sigh)

 

[sinfantasy]

My first two stories published on Lit dont have characters names. Like literally they are referred as he and she for entire narrative.

Both are stories related to tragedy, and personal growth, and names are irrelevant to the context. The choice was intentional, albeit I soon learned I lacked skills to pull of such trick.


His Love Lost, His Pen Found
Romance, heartbreak, growth and art.
10/01/2024 in Loving Wives Stories
Rating: 3.13

Letting Go
Road to recovery from heartbreak and betrayal.
09/22/2024 in Loving Wives Stories
Rating: 3.47

 

[AlinaX]

Stop necro-ing please.

Oh, please. This one wasn't even in the grave a year. It's more body snatching than tomb raiding.

 

[Craighalbert]

There have been a lot of threads here about names of characters. I and a few others have mentioned not naming some at all. We are not alone.

Number 6
Agent 99
The man with no name.



Others?

There's an underrated Walter Hill movie from the 70s about a getaway driver where none the characters have names. It's all "The Driver," "The Detective," etc. You don't really notice it. It's a little gimmicky I guess, but tbh the only times I tend to use people's names is when I'm trying to get their attention or referring to them when talking to other people.

 

[ShelbyDawn57]

Stop necro-ing please.

Is it too soon for a snarky comment? Thinking I should wait a year or two.

 

[Five_Inch_Heels]

There's an underrated Walter Hill movie from the 70s about a getaway driver where none the characters have names. It's all "The Driver," "The Detective," etc. You don't really notice it. It's a little gimmicky I guess, but tbh the only times I tend to use people's names is when I'm trying to get their attention or referring to them when talking to other people.

That is one KILLER movie. Top notch cast, Ryan O'Neal, Bruce Dern and Isabelle Adjani and some of the best chase scenes on film.

Some really weird twists.

 

[RetroFan]

I have one story 'Spoiled Princess Hates Camping' where this middle-aged, pious devoutly Christian man (a Ned Flanders type) sees snippets of what is going on between the younger characters, misinterprets them as being something to do with homosexuals, and gets himself into a state about it.

The man is never named, he is only referred to as 'The Christian Man' and for close to 10 years after posting the story, nobody said anything about him. Then I got a comment strongly criticising the character and me for writing him, saying he was an out-dated stereotype and that it was 'Christian-bashing'. Given the story had been there a decade before, and was already set many years in the past (1994) when things were very different, it seemed a little strange.

 

[NuclearFairy]

In the Moon's Daughter I didn't name anyone, because names for that story names felt completely unnecessary. And sometimes, names really are unnecessary, but it's the only story I've tried to write where the names felt unnecessary and so left out.

 

[designatedvictim]

(sigh)

Sorry, PSG, I've wound up necro-ing a thread, here, myself and I haven't been active here all that long.

Technically, I necro-ed the same thread twice, but the second one was only a two-month gap.

As for being relevant to the this fully armed and operational thread, the main character in my primary work is - so far - an unnamed character. Not named in the published parts, not yet named in the 40K or so words yet to be published.

The girlfriend does have a full three names. I needed it for a twit at her to show his annoyance, such as when a parent calls loudly at a child, using all three names, the child knows the parent is majorly annoyed.

The real-life girl I modeled the character upon had the same first and middle names (I used them because they were common enough), but I changed her very common last name to an equally common other last name, simply to avoid using her real full name.

 

[Carnevil9]

Lovecraft has a slew of stories told from the perspective of a first person anonymous narrator. Occasionally we will learn his name when someone addresses him, but HPL was smart enough to know that a reader could more easily put himself into the character's shoes if there were as few as possible cues that he was "someone else."

It's just like in porn, where they don't like to show the guy's face, so the (male) viewer can imagine it is his own cock getting serviced.