No Name Given / Comic Books

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• Batman:
  • His archfoe The Joker may or may not be named Jack… or maybe Joe. However, not even he himself is sure, due in part to his Multiple-Choice Past.
  • Ra's al Ghul left his real name behind centuries ago (as, presumably, did Vandal Savage), and is referred to only by his title. But Vandal Savage's real name was Vandar Adg, it's just eons out of date and used only in cave days.
  • Ra's' half-sister who becomes a thorn in Tim Drake's side uses only the title "Daughter of Acheron". She's not the only known user of the title but the other also goes by "Promise" even though she has also left behind her name, which prevents Tim from realizing they might be allied until he's already been captured.
• In The Dandy comic "Blinky", the titular character is only ever called Blinky; his real name is never revealed. In fact, the comic implies his name actually is Blinky.
• Daredevil has a kid in his 50th Anniversary issue, which is set in a distant future. We never learn the identity of the kid's mother.
• In Dennis the Menace (UK) (as featured in The Beano), Dennis's parents are simply known as "Mum" and "Dad". The creators once claimed in response to a reader's letter that his parents were actually named "Dennis's Mum" and "Dennis's Dad" at birth. This is true for all parents in The Beano except for Les Pretend's dad called Des.
• Disney Ducks Comic Universe: The Beagle Boys were never given any real names and are usually only referred to by their prison numbers (going so far that sometimes it's implied the numbers are actually their names or that even they themselves don't actually their birth names). The DuckTales-cartoon is actually the first time they got proper names, if also weird once like Bigtime, Burger and Bouncer.
• Garth Ennis seems to love this one, with characters like the Pilgrim, the Saint of Killers, the Female, the Frenchman, Arseface...
• In Giraffes On Horseback Salad, many of the characters are never referred to by name. This is most notable with Groucho and Chico's characters.
• The Grievous Journey of Ichabod Azrael: The Hunter, so named because he tracks down refugee souls to bring them back to face judgment in purgatory. Though considering he was let out of his confinement to hunt the main character from the stomach of a whale, he might be Jonah.
• The Sage and The Minstrel in Groo the Wanderer have never been given proper names, to the point some speculate that those ARE their names and they are possibly magical spirits of some sort (Sage, even flashbacks, always seems to be an old man, and the head of Minstrel's lute changes panel to panel). Famously also, Sage's dog didn't have a name for much of the book's run, and after a running gag of persistent questions about it in the letter's page, Sergio and Mark gave him the name of ANOTHER running gag from the letter's page ("Mulch").
• In The Immortal Iron Fist, the ninja-servant girl who is Orson Randall's daughter was never named, due to rather restricted freedoms. According to her, she'll have made a name for herself by the time Danny sees her again.
• Katy's younger sister in Katy Keene didn't have a name in the first run. The two revivals gave her different names, but neither was mentioned often.
• In Kid Eternity, the protagonist was originally only known as "the Kid," and his grandfather was only referred to as "Gran'pa." This only changed years later when the series underwent Canon Welding with the Shazam! series, and the Kid became Christopher "Kit" Freeman (Freddy's younger brother).
• Legends of the Dead Earth: In Robin (1993) Annual #5, Tris Plover realises that, even though she agreed to become his Robin, she does not even know the name of the former proctor who assumed the identity of Batman. He is killed before he ever has the chance to tell her.
• In The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past (1992), the boy from Kakariko doesn't have a canon name, and is known as "Sahasrala's friend."
• In Raymond Briggs' The Man, the title character's real name is never revealed. He claims not to have one.
• In Warren Ellis' breakout series Nextwave, a protagonist is named only "The Captain"; following his gaining powers, he discovered that almost every name which began with "Captain" had been used or was unusable; eventually, he settled for "The Captain", only to find that the name was also taken, and was forced to pay the original Captain for its use. Due to his abusive childhood, depression, and alcoholism, he refuses to divulge his real name; his teammates theorize that he may not even remember it. Ellis' original pitch also notes that the character "has been every crappy Marvel character with the word "Captain" in front of their name".
• DCU character who embodies this trope: The Phantom Stranger. This is the title used for copyright purposes, and whenever he is listed as a guest star in someone else's book. In the stories themselves, he is almost always referred to as "The Stranger" when the speaker wishes to be specific, or "my friend" when brevity is in order (and he happens to be present). Neil Gaiman used "Brotherless One" or descriptives, such as "your friend in the white turtleneck" in The Books of Magic. In a single exception, Jan or Zayna expressed amazement that almost the entire Justice League of America attended a particularly momentous gathering, "... except the Phantom Stranger."
• Robin (1993): The villain known as "The Cheater" goes out of their way to hide behind holograms and other devices and manages to keep their name from being uncovered even after being apprehended.
• The protagonist of Ronin (1983) is only ever called just that: Ronin.
• In The Smurfs, both the comic books and the cartoon show, there are important characters in the stories that don't have any names.
• In the original Stanley and His Monster, Stanley called the monster "Spot", but his actual name was never revealed. In the Post-Crisis reboot by Phil Foglio (consisting of an origins issue and a miniseries), it was explicitly established that he didn't have a name.
• Star Trek: Crew is an IDW miniseries by John Byrne about the life of Majel Barrett's character from "The Cage," who was only referred to as "Number One." Byrne manages to go through the entire series (and a few guest appearances in his other Star Trek books) without ever once revealing the character's name. Indeed, for most of it, he couldn't even call her "Number One," as that was simply a nickname for her rank in "The Cage."
• In Superman storyline A Mind-Switch in Time, supervillain Euphor never reveals his real name.
• Ghost of the Thunderbolts erased all record of his original identity after he became Ghost. When he recounts his origin, every mention of his original name is blacked out.
• In the Transformers comic series "The War Within: The Dark Ages", a character is introduced who is only ever referred to as "the Fallen," as his name was taken away from him by his fellow Transformers after he betrayed Primus and sided with Unicron. This is especially significant since Transformer names are not only personal labels, but usually define their entire purpose, personality, and/or function. (In the novel "Transformers Exodus", his original name is given as "Megatronus Prime.")
• Ultimate X Men: Kitty's Shroud identity is never named.
• V from V for Vendetta. (S)He states: "I do not have a name. You can call me V."
• Wonder Woman:
  • Wonder Woman (1942): It's entirely unclear what the Holliday College Dean's name is. Her desk is shown in a single panel with the name "Dean Strikt" on it but she's always called Dean Sourpuss, or other unflattering variants, even when her students are speaking with her.
  • Wonder Woman (1987): The ace pilot of Diana's freedom fighter Space Pirate crew goes unnamed despite the rest of the command crew getting named at least once on panel. It doesn't help that her morphic mimicking nature makes it unclear just which one she is in some panels, though she's usually bald and at least partially orange.
• X-Men comics have several examples:
  • Wolverine was known only as Logan (and he was around for several years before even that much was revealed). He had amnesia, and no-one knew what his real name was. In his origin series, Wolverine's name was revealed to be James Howlett, having stolen the name "Logan" from his family's groundskeeper, who turned out to be Wolverine's biological father. This information is not used in most adaptations, although in X-Men Origins: Wolverine Sabretooth refers to him as "Jimmy", and his full name is the same as it is in the comics. In spite of the revelation, he still goes by "Logan".
  • Rogue spent a large portion of her existence known only as that, but it was revealed in 2004 to be Anna Marie. She once used the alias Anna Raven, which consists of the first names of her and her foster mother, Mystique.
  • X-23 wasn't named at all in her first comics appearance in NYX. This was actually invoked in-universe, as well: She didn't receive her "real" name, Laura, until Sarah Kinney names her in the very last pages of X-23: Innocence Lost #6. She was thirteen years old before she was given a name other than her Facility codename/designation.
  • Forge is still known only as Forge.
• Alter Tse'elon, the Israeli Defense Force Colonel Badass from Y: The Last Man. Her parents had already lost two children when she was born, so they followed an old Jewish superstition of keeping her real name a secret so that the Angel of Death couldn't find her. After Yorick realizes she's a Death Seeker, she announces her real name to the crowd. It's Yedida, by the way.
  • Agent 355 from the same comic. She eventually whispers her name in Yorick's ear, but it's never revealed to the readers. Word of God says you can find it somewhere hidden in the book. The popular fan theory is that it's Peace, since that's written on her gravestone.

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