The Names - Florence Knapp [Review]

The concept is irresistible: what would your life look like if you’d been given a different name? Not a different upbringing or postcode, just a different word to answer to. Florence Knapp builds her debut novel on that single premise, tracing three parallel lives of the same boy, each version unfolding from the name chosen for him in 1987; Gordon, the name his father insists on; Julian, his mother Cora’s choice; and Bear, the whimsical pick of his older sister Maia.

It doesn’t start well. “Bear” opens with Cora’s head being smashed against a fridge, again and again. In “Julian,” Cora gets her head smashed into a plate of lasagne. Punishments for not sticking to the family tradition of naming the son after his father. It’s grim, deliberately so. I half-expected to reach “Gordon” and find another excuse for violence, but there’s none, at least not as explicit. The psychological cruelty, though, arguably cuts deeper than any bruise. Whether Knapp is saying that naming a child “Gordon” spares him or merely shifts the form of suffering is up for debate. Either way, she’s interested in the quiet mutations of abuse, how control doesn’t always leave physical marks.

The domestic detail is convincing. The premise, less so. It’s hard not to get caught on the practical absurdity of it all. The idea that parents would fail to discuss the name before registration, and that this tiny semantic fork could lead to three wildly divergent timelines just seven years down the line. In one, the father is a murderer, in another, the mother has been killed, and in the third, they’re playing dress-up for London’s social elite. It’s a lot. The pace of divergence feels almost parodic, as if the butterfly effect’s wings are flapping too loudly.

And yet, the longer I read, the more I stopped fighting it. Because beneath the chaos is something strangely recognisable. A name can be destiny, just not in the supernatural way we imagine. It can shape how others treat you, how teachers call the register, how employers scan a CV, how friends decide who you are before you’ve had a chance to show them. A 2019 study by Anthony Heath and Valentina Di Stasio found that applicants with non white British names were significantly less likely to receive callbacks than those with white British ones. Knapp isn’t doing that kind of social-science realism, she’s writing a fable about identity as performance. What happens if you spend your whole life in someone else’s mouth?

Across the three timelines, the differences grow more interesting when they get smaller. Bear, the freest version, becomes a kind of art-school eccentric; confident, loved, occasionally insufferable. Julian is cautious, clinging to his sister for warmth. Gordon, meanwhile, is the dutiful son, paralysed by obedience. Each boy reflects not just a different name, but a different reaction to fear. And the more you look, the more the name seems to act as a self-fulfilling prophecy. Bear believes he’s special, so he is. Gordon believes he’s inadequate, so he becomes it.

Still, I’m not sure Knapp ever fully earns the scale of her experiment. For all the talk of names shaping lives, what really defines these boys is the trauma that comes before language, the scenes in that kitchen, the tone of a father’s voice, the choice to comfort or look away. Those are the moments that shape us long before we’re capable of spelling our own names. The novel hints at this but doesn’t quite confront it. It keeps insisting on the power of the name itself when the evidence points elsewhere.

What works better is how those names ripple outward. In the “Bear” timeline, Maia grows into a fierce protector, buoyed by the brightness of her brother’s world. In “Julian,” they only have each other; fragile, codependent, tender. In “Gordon,” they’re both terrified. Knapp shows that a name doesn’t just define the person who wears it, but everyone forced to say it.

There’s something hypnotic about watching one life fracture into three. The book works almost like a psychological Rorschach test; you start wondering what parts of your own life could have split differently if someone had called you by another name, or if you’d believed the one you already had.

The Names isn’t flawless. The leaps in logic can be jarring, and the metaphor occasionally clunks under its own weight. But it’s hard to deny how bold it feels. Knapp’s writing is assured, emotionally precise, and quietly experimental. The kind of debut that doesn’t just tell a story but asks you to confront the one you’re living.

I finished it feeling uneasy but impressed. Not because I believed entirely in her premise, but because I believed in her conviction. The idea that something as flimsy as a name could alter the trajectory of a life is, of course, absurd. But so is the idea that it couldn’t.