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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/10205
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Here is a problem I run into regularly as a short story writer. Sometimes I don't ever plan to give someone a name. Particularly if they are going to be disposed of in some fashion not warranting the effort of naming them.

- Name them by what they are wearing, i.e. a mugger in a red jacket becomes Red Jacket for the sake of the internal dialog of my main character. He isn't interested in them, he just needs a way to identify them.

- You can simply decide to name them by a personal descriptive attribute, i.e. big hands, dark eyes, scary man with a lisp. Each of these focuses on a threatening aspect of the person allowing you to build around that descriptive element. 

You don't always need to give your characters names as long as you give them presence with the descriptions when they come onto the scene. This information cements them into the consciousness of the reader and their names become less important than whatever they represent.

Original score: 7