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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/46091
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

 **The same reason people in real life go by different names in different contexts.**

A doctor might go by Dr. Grey with her patients and subbourdinates, Dr. G to very young patients, Merridith to friendly acquaintances, and Mer to close friends, and Merri with her parents. Which name people use for her sets the context for the situation. It would be weird to refer to a doctor by first name in a medical context, and it would be equally weird for lovers to refer to each other by full name when running for their lives. This explains the use of many different names in dialog and first person narration. Even if a story is written in third person, it may be less confusing for the narration to use the same names as people use in the surrounding dialog.

Nicknames can also convey conflict (such as when a character shows anger or disrespect by using an inappropriate moniker), or the evolution of a character (such as a character going by Timmy as a young child and changing to Timothy when he becomes an adult).

**How can an author make it clearer that two different names refer to the same person?**

In your example of Sammy/Sam, most readers would probably easily see the resemblance, but for names that look or sound very different it _is_ important to establish the names refer to the same character. For cases where a character is sometimes referred to by first name and sometimes by last name, the character should ideally be referred to by full name in the first scene where they are introduced. For nicknames that have no relation to the original name (such as The Rock for a character named Johnson), you probably want to have a transition the first time the less common name is introduced. Maybe the character is listening to a recording of The Rock fighting and a second character says "that's you up there, Johnson."

For much more complicated naming systems, especially where multiple characters end up with the same name in different circumstances, the easiest way to help the reader is to describe some obvious unique feature of the character every time they appear. For example, in _War and Peace_ there are two characters that can be called Nikolai, but one goes by Nikolai the majority of the time and one only uses that nickname when among family unrelated to the first Nikolai. The two characters also have different titles. So the first character is introduced to the scene by the title of Prince if there may be ambiguity and the second is referred to as Little Nikolai or as a hussar.

Which name to choose for a character in a given sentence should always be an intentional choice based on the context. A good writer shouldn't alternate between names for the pure sake of variety, but because the nickname conveys some meaning. All of the different names in _War and Peace_, for example, are honestly a bit hard to follow, but they are consistent within a scene and the complicated naming scheme is essential to the story because it conveys so much information about where each character fits into a slice of Russian society.

Original score: 9