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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/5185
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Your worry is a valid one; the reader could be frustrated by this. However, this is something that can be taken care of in later drafts. You may need to shore things up a little to clarify the mystery character and their relationship to the other characters.

Since we don't know much about your project - novel? short story? game premise? movie pitch? - it's hard to give you specific advice. I hope the following scattershot suggestions will help:

- Will different people be referring to the mystery character by more or less the same phrase or title? If everyone refers to "the MacGuffin character", then the problem is minimized. 
- Maybe different people only have their own pieces of the puzzle and don't interact. If that's the case, they'd have no reason to use the same catchphrase or title for the mystery character. If that's the case, your job is a little harder. I'd suggest looking for commonalities between these characters who will refer to the mystery character. They'll come up with their own tags for the mystery character, but its possible to make them parallel in verbal structure. Better yet, construct the nicknames so they tell the reader something about the character's relation to the mystery character. 
- If the rest of the tale is clear, the characters well-drawn, and the language fairly straightforward, then there should be a mysterious "vortex" when we get near the mystery character. If it's the same feel each time, the reader will be able to make the connection. 

Original score: 3