word choice - How to have a character be nameless for the first few paragraphs of a book?

Let me first explain what is going in in the beginning of the story: My main character belongs to a tribal culture that requires their children pass a rite of passage to earn their name.

So I'm kind of stuck on how to refer to the character while he is on his trial. (The story would start up right in the thick of battle as he is taking the test, which is done by going out into the jungle and stalking and killing some form of food that would feed the tribe.)

Then a bit later I had planned to have my second character make her appearance, interrupting his trial so he technically never gets his name. However, she gives him one by making her nickname for him his name for the rest of the story.

But up until that point I am not sure how to reference him if I am doing it from his perspective.

Answer

You have a few things going on here:

1) If the story is first-person, your problem is solved. We rarely address ourselves by our given names in internal monologues.

2) If your story is in third person, then you have a cultural issue.

The children may not get official Names (Starfall, Willow, Runs With Scissors) until they do something to earn it. But you still have to address someone before that age, since they have to have some level of competence to hunt and kill food. A mother with three kids under the age of trial is not going to introduce them as Hey You, Thing 1, and Pain In My Butt (even if that's how she thinks of them).

So I think you need a culturally embarrassing placeholder address which is clearly not a name, which the nickname will then supplant.

• It could be a cutesy use-name, which is why a warrior of either gender would reject it (Starlight, Birdsong, Crushed Peony Booger).


• It could be a mocking name (Screech, Sewage, Mr. Hankey the Christmas Poo) because the tribe thinks the gods will steal children who have fine names, so they give them ugly names until they are old enough to defend themselves against the gods.


• It could be a literal placeholder (Third Daughter of Two Blades).

3) Cultural issues aside, if this is a short story and you really mean five or six paragraphs, using "the warrior" or "the boy on trial" is fine.