What should the omniscient narrator call a character?
Let there be a character. Let the character's name be, for example, Alexander.
Now, Alexander's parents call him 'Sasha'. His friends call him 'Xander'. His girlfriend calls him 'Alex'. In formal circumstances, he's 'Alexander, son of Philipp'. To himself, he is all of those - they are, after all, variations on a theme.
What should the omniscient narrator call him? That is, if the omniscient narrator sits on the parents' shoulder, Alexander is called 'Sasha'. If the omniscient narrator sits on the girlfriend's shoulder, Alexander is called 'Alex'. But what if the narrator is sitting on Alexander's shoulder, or on no shoulder at all?
1 answer
I would think Alexander would think of himself with the name he first learned and responded to as a child; likely this was what his mother called him on a daily basis, I would guess that is where the "Sasha" comes from.
However, were I writing, the narrator would use "Alex", for brevity in reading and being slightly less intimate than "Sasha". I feel that distance is important: I don't feel like a narrator should present like his friend, to me ruling out "Sasha" and "Xander", but then again the narrator will be talking about him a great deal, and would likely resort to a shortened version of his full first name; hence "Alex" instead of "Alexander" (or something even longer and more formal).
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