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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/6061
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/6061
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Orson Scott Card answers your question precisely and eloquently in his excellent _Character and Viewpoint_, under the heading [One Name Per Character](http://books.google.co.il/books?id=-jehiAI0WJAC&pg=PA56&dq=%22orson+scott+card%22+%22One+Name+Per+Character%22&hl=iw&sa=X&ei=Tor-T-L_Lu-P4gTE4YWBBw&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false). Go, read.

For posterity, I'll summarize:

- Names should be treated as "invisible words" - they're so common, the reader hardly notices them. You can repeat them as often as you like, without worrying about "sounding repetitive".
- Alternating between different tags can be confusing and distracting.
- Every POV (point of view) should stick to a single tag per character - that's how that person thinks of them. This tag might demonstrate the relationship between the characters - Mr. John de Havilland might be "Johnny" to his wife, "Mr. de Havilland" to his subordinates, "the prig in the yellow shirt" to a street kid, and "Knives" to a newly-released ex-con whose gang he belonged to when he was 11. But the ex-con will never think of him as "Mr. de Havilland," nor as "the plumber." Don't break from the POV's chosen tag unless the story itself calls for it.
- Don't use the tags themselves to tell us directly about the character - rotating between "De Havilland," "the plumber," "the 50-year old," "the ugly revolutionary," "the Soviet spy" just to tell us he is all those things. It's clunky, it's confusing, and it's telling us rather than showing us.

Original score: 23