You Are Number Six / Literature

You Are Number 6 in literature.

---

• .007 from the short story of the same name is a steam locomotive, so his name is just his serial number.
• Walter Dean Meyers' Forty Seven is about an African-American slave boy known only by that number before his escape.
• In Nineteen Eighty-Four, Winston is addressed by telescreens as "Smith! 6079 Smith W!"
• Tim from Almost Perfect has a dog named 4493 because that was what they called him at the animal shelter, and Tim is worried he'll be confused if they change his name now.
• Members of the Servant Race created by Beloved's people to crew and maintain them in Walter Jon Williams's Angel Station are given designations based on their function and a number. A key character in the novel is General Volitional Twelve. He's not a "general" in the military sense, but his function is non-specific (i.e. general-purpose).
• In Animorphs, all Yeerks have numbers attached to their names — for example, "Esplin Nine-Four-Double-Six." (In his case, he also has a twin brother with the same name and number, but they have "primary" and "secondary" thrown in there, too.) The same is true of Yeerk ranks: the above is also called Visser Three, that is, the third-highest visser (general/warlord) in the Yeerk Empire. Visser One is his superior and boss, though they rank lower than the Council of Thirteen. (As far as we know, they're not given ranks, though one of them is Emperor and thus the main power.)
  • Early books hewed closer to this trope, implying that Yeerks only have ranks, not names—the one who infests Jake introduces himself as Temrash-One-One-Four, recently promoted from Temrash-Two-Five-Two, and Chapman's Yeerk, Iniss-Two-Two-Six, was apparently just "an" Iniss. Later on the Vissers and Sub-Vissers seem to be the only numbered ranks, and a Yeerk's "name," though also numbered, remain the same no matter where they are on the totem pole.
  • Downplayed with the Ketrans — each member of the Ellimist's crystal is technically designated by where they roost, with his being "Azure Level, Seven Spar, Extension Two, Down-Messenger, Forty-one." Everybody just makes up their own name, however, with his being "Toomin;" Ellimist was basically his screen name. At one point he notes that he's forgotten what his Love Interest's actual designation is^note If you're wondering: Violet Level, Two Spar, Main Branch, Left-Messenger, One hundred twenty-nine.
• One of Ayn Rand's somewhat lesser known books Anthem had a collectivist dystopia in which everyone had names like Solidarity-0665 or Union-0934.
• In Artemis Fowl: The Lost Colony, imps are referred to as numbers until they transform into demons. Imp No1, a major character, decides to keep his number even after it is revealed that he is a wizard, and will never go through "metamorphosis", because "It's my name — it's who I am."
• Isaac Asimov:
  • "Catch That Rabbit": The DV series model is of a central robot with six additional robots networked to function as subsidiary systems. The central robot is officially DV-5 (and unofficially Dave), while the first of the subsidiaries is DV-5-2.
  • "Liar! (1941)": The story focuses on the thirty-fourth RB unit, also known as Herbie.
  • "Little Lost Robot": The robots are all NS-2 models. They aren't even given any serial numbers, which makes it hard to find the one modified robot in a shipment of identical robots.
  • Prelude to Foundation: The Mycogen sector of Trantor have a "cohort" (family) name and a number for first name, like Mycelium 72, Raindrop 43, Raindrop 45, and Sunmaster 14.
  • "Reason": The QT models are robots, and QT-1 is the first one of its type. To humanize it, Powell and Donovan call it "Cutie".
  • "Runaround": The robot model Donovan and Powell are field-testing is designated SPD 13.
• To draw attention to the dehumanizing nature of this trope, Oscar Wilde first published "The Ballad of Reading Gaol" under his prisoner number, C.3.3. Only with the third edition was his name put on the cover.
• In Toni Morrison's Beloved, Paul D’s brothers are named Paul A and Paul F, suggesting slaves interchangeability in their owners' minds.
• Beyond Thirty: In the ruins of London, the marooned Americans acquire a guide named Thirty-Six, a captured warrior from the elephant country.
• Walter R. Brooks (creator of Mister Ed) wrote a series of children's novels about Freddy, a talking pig who's also a private detective, and who lives on a farm where all the animals talk. All of the animals on this farm (including the rats and spiders) have names — often very clever and unusual names — except for the rabbits. There are so many rabbits, they just use numbers instead of names.
• The Brotherhood of the Conch: In the city of Coal, the setting of Shadowland, most people are known by serial numbers, like M-4372. Elites like Dr. S are allowed to have an initial, but only members of La Résistance are known by actual names.
• The Cat in the Hat has his assistants, Thing 1 and Thing 2.
• In the original novel version of A Clockwork Orange, Alex's prison name/number is the slightly longer "6655321".
• John C. Wright uses this in Chronicles of Chaos, borrowing the Roman style of naming children in the order in which they are born. The children pick names for themselves before the series starts, however, with Primus becoming Victor Invictus Triumph, Secunda becoming Amelia Armstrong Windrose, Tertia becoming Vanity Bonfire Fair, and Quartinus becoming Colin Iblis mac FirBolg, but Quentin doesn't wish to change his name and becomes Quentin Nemo.
• In Clementine and the Family Meeting, one of the books in the Clémentine series by Sara Pennypacker, Clementine and her partner in science class, Waylon, name the rat they're using for their science experiment "Eighteen." This is because it's one of eighteen rats in the classroom. When Eighteen has babies, they name them Eighteen and One Fifth, Eighteen and Two Fifths, Eighteen and Three Fifths, Eighteen and Four Fifths and Eighteen and Five Fifths.
• The First Lord and family in Codex Alera follow the Roman example under Real Life.
• The Count of Monte Cristo. While Edmond Dantès is imprisoned in the Château d'If, a new governor is put in charge. He doesn't want to bother learning the names of the prisoners, so he refers to them by the numbers of their cells. As a result, Dantès is known as Number 34.
• Subverted in the Ursula K Leguin novel, The Dispossessed. On this anarcho-syndicalist world, the central computer assigns each person a name at birth that is a random but unique sequence of six letters (apparently the computer is programmed to pick pronounceable combinations of vowels and consonants). That is the person's only name, and, being unique, doubles as a social security number.
• Domina: The character Silk admits this is not her real name; it's the last digit of a serial number for the body she is currently inhabiting, and means "six." In a variant, this isn't used to disrespect her, but to disrespect everyone else. She says that no one is worthy of knowing any of her other names.
• Fee-5 in Alfred Bester's Extro is so-called because she was born in the fifth row of a theatre auditorium.
• The first book of The Faerie Queene has a more symbolic version of this. The Love Interest is named Una, standing for the one-ness of the true (Protestant) faith; her nemesis, standing for the "two-faced" Roman Catholic church, is named Duessa. The fourth book has three brothers named Priamond, Diamond and Triamond, according to their order of birth.
• Eight the lynx from Felidae On the Road. He's the eighth (and sole surviving) lynx from a wildlife reintroduction program.
• In The Forever Formula by Francis Bonham, clones are given their progenitor's first name and then a Roman-style ordinal number as a second name. The clone nurse who helps Evan Clark is named Eliza Tertia as she is the third clone of a famous nurse with the first name "Eliza".
• In Fractured Stars, the twelve combat androids McCall purchases go by their serial numbers, which are all somewhere in the J-2900s.
• Ghosts of the Titanic: When the crew of the Mackay-Bennett were tasked with collecting and identifying the bodies of the people who died when the Titanic sunk, the system they used had bodies that didn't have any belongings that could identify them, or were to rotted/damaged to be identified, listed as numbers and given a Burial at Sea. Annie was identified as Body #61 because Angus took the purse containing the photos that would have identified her as Michael's son. Also, for the longest time, Angus thought Michael also drowned in the sea, and was Body #4. Then he met Michael later on in life.
• In The Giver, each member of the Community has an ID number based on birth order within a given year. They receive names when assigned to family units at the start of the next year, but numbers are still used in official contexts. Parents may also call a misbehaving child by their number, as if to say that only obedient children deserve names.
  • Children are also referred to by their current age, which officially increases on the same day each year, for everyone – e.g. a child is “a Four,” and all born in a certain year are “the Elevens.” Most adults (everyone older than Twelves) lose track of their age, but central records ensure that each cohort gets to retire and join the “Olds” on schedule.
• In the Guardians of Ga'Hoole series, St. Aegolius' Academy for Orphaned Owls gives each owl a number until they became high ranking enough to receive a name.
• The Han Solo Trilogy: All Pilgrims have their names replaced with numbers (Bria's is 921). She says that it's because they give their names up to serve the One and the All wholly, but no doubt it helps break them down further so they can be fully taken in by the cult's indoctrination.
• In Hive Mind (2016), everyone has both a personal name (e.g. Amber) and an ID number (e.g. 2514-0172-912). Nobody seems to really mind, though, possibly because the number is only ever used for administrative purposes.
• In Holes, everybody at Camp Green Lake uses a nickname; one character, who's looked down on somewhat by the others (except, eventually, the protagonist) is called Zero. Somewhat justified, though, since it's based on (but also hides) his real name, Hector Zeroni.
• Manpower Inc.'s genetic slaves from Honor Harrington books are given alphanumerical designations.
• In Gene Wolfe's "The Horars of War" the title beings, a race of artificial life forms created as "super-soldiers," are designated and referred to as their production order numbers, even by each other.
• In his Holocaust memoir If This Is a Man, Primo Levi receives the number 174517 on arrival in Auschwitz. He describes how many of the prisoners' origins can be recognised by number alone — for example, those numbered 30,000 to 40,000 are mainly the few remaining survivors of the Polish ghettos.
  • Incidentally, Primo's given name is also an example, as it means "first".
• In the Instrumentality series of stories by Cordwainer Smith, people have numbers instead of names, but to make them a little more personal, they call themselves the last digits of their numbers in old Earth languages: Sto Odin ("101" in Russian), Trece ("13" in Spanish), and so on.
• In Terry Pratchett's Interesting Times, and other Discworld novels featuring them, men from the Agatean Empire typically have a name consisting of a number, an adjective, and a noun — for example, One Big River or Six Beneficient Winds. Word of God is "I just wanted a coherent way of making up 'foreign' names and I think I pinched the Mayan construction." Common people seem to shorten their names to the number and noun, ie Twoflower and Ninereeds. This isn't considered particularly dehumanizing, but it is seen as important — in one incidental scene we come across one Two Little Wang, who hasn't been terribly happy with his life up to this point and pins it on being given the unlucky number Two — "Little Wang" is by way of being mildly insulting icing on an already unfortunate and doomed cake. At one point, Cohen messes around with the taxing system, and nicknames one of the beneficiaries "One Lucky Peasant."
• James Bond.
  • Bond himself, being the 007 of MI6's Double-Oh section.
  • Each main member of SPECTRE has a number assigned to them, which changes every month to confuse their adversaries. In Thunderball, its leader Ernst Stavro Blofeld is currently number two, and the book's Big Bad Emilio Largo is number one.
  • The ten main members of Decada in The Facts of Death have assigned numbers, with their leader being the One.
• In the Keys to the Kingdom series, every Denizen has a number denoting their name and "ranking" in the House (lower is invariably better). It is common to hear "Give your name and precedence in the House." The number defines the Denizen's position, and conversely, when the position is changed, the number adjusts itself accordingly. Although most characters encountered are at least in the thousands, Arthur is mentioned as having a rank of 6 at the beginning of Sir Thursday (presumably because 1-5 is composed of the remaining Trustees and some final entity).
• In Barbara Hambly's Knight of the Demon Queen the protagonist goes through a variety of Hells to get the quest object and is in a dystopia for a week before realising that it is a real human world and not a hell with some humans trapped in it. In this dystopia people have numbers instead of names, i.e. their SSN is their name. Although these are often shortened into nicknames of a sort, with more common names in front. EX: "Corvin 9550" (Corvin Ninety-Five Fifty).
• In Logan's Run characters are Name X, e.g. Logan 3 (5 in the movie).
• Les Misérables: Jean Valjean is first known as 24601, then later as 9430.
• In the backstory to The Lord of the Rings (The War of the Jewels, if you're curious), there are three Elves named Imin, Tata and Enel, or "One", "Two" and "Three", allowing for linguistic drift. Although considering who they are, it's entirely possible the numbers were named after them rather than the other way around.
• The Lost Symbol: At one point, we get a flashback to the time Mal'akh spent in a Turkish prison, where he was known only by his prison designation of "Inmate 37". This serves to conceal the fact that he's actually Zachary Solomon, and that when he appears to be plotting Zachary's murder with the prison administrator, they're actually planning to fake his death.
• Humans in The Madness Season have not had real names for centuries, instead given a numerical designation in the language of their Tyr overlords. That includes the main character who had been designated Daetrin Ungashak To-Alym Haal (or just Daetrin to his friends).
• Momo: The Grey Men are physically indistinguishable and have serial numbers instead of names, e.g. the one who tries and fails to procure Momo's co-operation is Agent BLW/553/c.
• The titular protagonist of the Montmorency novels was semiconscious and unable to state his name while put on trial for robbery, so was sentenced under his prisoner number. Likewise, the guards and the doctor who treated his injuries never bothered to ask. We are never actually told his previous name, either.
• In Moojag and the Auticode Secret, the Gajooms all go by numbers like G6 and G21.
• Gehn, the Big Bad of one Myst novelisation, has a habit of numbering everything he comes to control, mainly including the worlds he "creates" but extending to the people who inhabit said worlds. He doesn't care if they already had a name, and doesn't see why this might be inappropriate.
• Mark Twain's posthumously-published novella, The Mysterious Stranger, stars an "angelic" but nefarious boy, who, in alternate scripts, goes by the name "forty-four"^note or if you really want to get technical, "No. 44, New Series: 864,962". For what reason this was done is still a mystery.
• The Naturals: One of the characters, born in a number-obsessed cult, was named Nine. Unusually for this trope, none of the other cult members were named numerically — this name was actually a sign of her status as the 9th member of a particular circle.
• Nightfall (1941) uses code numbers as surnames, e.g. "Sheerin 501" and "Siferra 89".
• In William Joyce's picture book, The Numberlys, all of the characters have only numbers and no proper names until a group of five children invents the alphabet.
• In the Of Man and Manta series by Piers Anthony, agents are super-humans created from normal people who, for whatever reason, are in a vegetative state. The agents have a two-letter designation which indicates which series they are, but are given names to "humanize" them. The names are generated by their series, e.g. a female agent in the TA series becomes "Tammy".
• In Kevin O'Donnell's novel ORA:CLE, personal names are alphanumeric strings encoding personal attributes (including allotted public time and computer-related knowledge [!]); for example, the main character's name is ALL80 AFAHSC NFF6 (Ale Elatey for short).
• In Paradox Bound, the Faceless Men have no names, only numbers. Those number do change, though, and are assigned on a case-by-case basis. All of them start with Zero in order to reinforce the idea that they're nothing.
• Perry Rhodan sometimes uses numbers in alien naming schemes, usually to indicate that the species in question is particularly 'rational', fond of order, or of robotic origin. Sometimes names may get conflated with titles, too — for example, the commander of a Maahk vessel or installation is usually a 'Grek-1', but no other name is generally ever given, leaving the reader to speculate just how they address each other at meetings...
• Princesses of the Pizza Parlor: Kobolds initially name their children by birth order, such as "Third of Six", until they do something spectacular and get a name based off whatever that event is.
• In The Railway Series, the number 6 engine of the Culdee Fell Railway is initially named Lord Harry, but that gave him a big head and a Jerkass Leeroy Jenkins attitude, and after one reckless accident too many they take away his name, leaving him literally just Number 6. He remains styled No. 6 until he redeems himself at the end of the book, heroically helping to save some stranded mountain climbers and earning the name Patrick, named for one of the climbers he helped rescue.
• Hugo Gernsback, the namesake of the Hugo Award, wrote a story titled "Ralph 124C41+ " about a typical citizen of a future utopia. Although Ralph's surname appears to be a random serial number, it is actually "One to foresee for all".
• The IOI employees referred to as "Sixxers" in Ready Player One accept this trope as part of their employment. IOI gives them top-of-the-line gear and a suite of experts in their attempt to find Halladay's Egg. In exchange, they have to leave their avatar's appearance set to the defaults and name it "IOI XXXXXX" where the Xs are the employee's six digit employee ID number. Bonus points because all of them have an ID number that starts with number 6.
• In Amy Tintera's Reboot, children who come back to life after death are referred to by the number of minutes they were dead.
• Replica. All the clones are Amy if girl, Andy if boy. So when they are together, the heroine is Seven.
• In the Septimus Heap books, several boys in the Youth Army have numbers for names, notably Boy 412 and Boy 409. The former is how the title character is known for most of the first book. Though since his real name is Septimus, he's still named for a number — and it's a Meaningful Name, since he's the seventh son of a seventh son. Additionally, in the first book, Magyk, when DomDaniel's heavies take over the Rat Office, the message rat Stanley is given the designation "Rat One Oh One," and told that "a numbered rat is an efficient rat."
• In The Silver Sword: after his escape from a prison camp, Joseph shows his camp number burnt into his arm.
• Shellpeople in The Ship Who... books are all humans shut into life-support capsules called "shells" at an early age, mostly because they wouldn't survive long otherwise. As such they all do have names. When they "graduate" and their shells are installed as Wetware CPUs into ships and space stations, they're given numbered designations. Helva is XH-834 to start. The first letter is swapped out for the first initial of whatever brawn she's partnered with, the second letter is from her name. An older brainship that she talks to, the MS-422, tells Helva not to call her "Silvia" as Silvia died long ago, but rather to refer to her as 422.
  • A spy in PartnerShip he says Nancia can call him X-39. When she points out that she already knows his name, he cheerfully agrees; he just thinks it would be fun to be called that.
• In Erich Maria Remarque's novel, Spark of Life (set in a concentration camp), the protagonist is only called 509, his serial number.
• Cherijo of Stardoc is short for Comprehensive Human Enhancement Research ID: J Organism. She originally thought it was some exotic Navajo name. She later meets an earlier (male) clone and refers to him as Cherico (for Comprehensive Human Enhancement Research ID: C Organism, him being the third clone) only to be corrected that it's "Jericho".
• The Roman version of this gets referenced in Neil Gaiman's Stardust with the seven brothers Primus, Secundus, Tertius, Quartus, Quintus, Sextus, and Septimus. And their sister, Una.
• In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: A Stitch in Time, the youths training at the Bamarren Institute are not permitted to use their names; instead they are assigned a group and a number. The number (one to ten) signifies their position within the group, with the higher numbers considered superior. Supposedly, they are numbered according to skill level, but politics and birthright play just as large a role. At the end of each three-year course, the numbers switch, and it is here that lower-born youths with talent can achieve a more deserving position. It's a mix of meritocratic principles and social stratification.
• In the Star Wars Expanded Universe, Clone Troopers were assigned numerical designations like RC-1138. During training, they gave each other nicknames, some of them based on something they did, like Scorch and Climber, from their numbers, like Forr, Sev, Fi, Niner, Fives, and A-98 becoming Nate, or from descriptive Mandalorian words like Di'kut and, well, Nate, who changed his name to Jangotat.
  • One book — either Labyrinth of Evil or the novelization of Revenge of the Sith — makes a note that later batches of clones, particularly the special ops ones, have real names. The one that tends to follow Obi-Wan around, for instance, is named Cody.
  • The X-Wing Series assigns each pilot a different number; on missions they are expected to stick rigidly to that number, though the narration still uses names when it comes to squadron members. Twice the significance of numbers is brought up — once, a droid is pleased by the nickname "Thirteen" because this implied that it was the thirteenth member of the twelve-pilot squadron; and in a different book a new pilot smiles about being Two, not knowing that that number, and subsequently being number one's wingmate, is reserved for inexperienced pilots who aren't fully trusted to fly well and act correctly, and thus have the squadron's best pilot always on hand to protect them if they screw up in battle. The number system is justified in the same book series as a way to reduce the amount of information they're giving away over the comm system, dating from the early days of the Alliance when their identities were actually secret; they deliberately use low-quality systems with poor signal quality for the same reason.
  • In A New Hope: The Princess, the Scoundrel and the Farm Boy, a canon junior novelization of A New Hope, Leia Organa is Prisoner 2187, the same as her cell number.
• In a literal example, in the Sword of Truth books, there's a witchwoman named "Six," who was the sixth daughter born to her mother. Among witch women, the seventh daughter is viewed as special, and by naming her Six it was a constant reminder that she missed out.
• A major character in Syrup by Max Barry is literally named "6". Not even "six", but the Arabic numeral "6".
• In the Tamir Triad trilogy by Lynn Flewelling, independent mages are forced to register with the King's personal mages to receive a number they are to wear all time. That's when Iya understands the meaning of the number she had seen in an oracle years before: 222.
• There Is No Epic Loot Here, Only Puns: Delta's Her first possible choice of name, which she rejects for the fourth Greek letter, Delta:
  It was a perfectly round object that pulsed with a tiny light. On that orb, the fainting symbol could be seen.
  4
  She shuddered.
  Four?
  This thing was… her?
  She was just a number to that thing. Not the first… definitely not the last.
  [...]
  Ugh… she was going to die here as some orb thing.
  Without a name? No, she needed a name, something to defined herself and used to hold herself together with.
  She pulled something that seemed to float by as she just stared at the orb.
  Delta.
  It was kinda four-ish. It was better than Orby or screaming-wailing-ghost-girl. Definitely better than just ‘victim number four’.
• In the novel This Perfect Day by Ira Levin, people in a dystopian future are given "namebers", such as Li RM35M4499, the hero, and Anna SG38P2823, his eventual wife.
• The narrator of Tom Paine Maru gives his name as Whitey O'Thraight — or so it seems, until someone grousing about Whitey's regimented lifestyle sarcastically wonders why his people don't simply use numbers. They do. His name is actually YD-038.
• In Touch (2017), Caleb is part of a Servant Race of selectively-bred Heinz Hybrid monster hunters. Technically he's "Asset Thirteen," with "Twenty-Three" being his partner; he chose his name for himself. When he explains this to James he refuses to tell his number, saying that he wants there to be one person who doesn't think of him that way.
• Vorkosigan Saga:
  • In Labyrinth, Miles encounters a genetic construct named Nine.
  • In Ethan of Athos, the fugitive they're chasing is named L-X-10-Terran-C (Terrence Cee as a nickname), who also had a sister/mate named J-X-Ceta-9 (Janine).
  • In Falling Free, as genetically designed mass-produced free-fall dwellers, many of the original quaddies had names that were adaptations of their serial numbers (e.g., TNY became Tony, CLR became Claire, etc.).
  • The Quaddies show up again in Diplomatic Immunity; their population having significantly grown since Falling Free, they've kept the single-name convention but now attach a number if there is already someone using that name. A significant character is named Garnet Five; in passing, a Leo Ninety-Nine is mentioned, showing just how fondly the Quaddies remember Leo Graf.
• In The War of the Flowers by Tad Williams the main character finds out his real name is Septimus, and is indignant at having been named "number seven".
• Watership Down has Hrairoo, or Fiver. Rabbits can only count to four, so any number over that is "a great many", and "Hrair" can be translated as both "five" and "thousand". The mythical rabbit patriarch, El-ahrairah (Elil-hrair-rah), is the "prince of a thousand enemies."
• In The Watchmaker of Filigree Street, Thaniel and Mori befriend a workhouse orphan who is known only as "Six," the number given to her at the workhouse.
• The slaves in the junkyard on Aganon in the Wayfarers series are batches of identical clones. Each batch uses a common girls' name for all of its members, such as Lucy or Claire, and a number to distinguish each individual. When Jane 23 escapes, she first drops the number from her name, and eventually takes a new name entirely, reflecting the individual identity she's come to embrace.
• In We, people no longer have names; they are not only referred to by number, but even are called "numbers." For example, the main character's number is D-503.
• In Who Lie In Gaol, Joan Henry's real-life account of being in Holloway prison in the 1950s, she describes her number being more important than her name, and being reprimanded because somebody who wrote to her omitted to write her prisoner number on the envelope.
• The Wolf Chronicles: Ruuqo's name is wolf-speak for "second son", and this ties into his insecurities about the strength of his leadership: originally his brother was meant to lead the pack.
• In The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, when the protagonists Sylvia and Bonnie are sent to Mrs. Brisket's Orphanage of Fear in the original book, they are told that none of the children there have names and that they are now number ninety-eight and ninety-nine respectively.
• Word of Mouse: In addition to having their fur genetically dyed different colours, the mice at the lab are tagged on their ear with a serial number. Isaiah's number is 97.

---