The Names

The Names is a 2025 novel by Florence Knapp and her debut. It was published in the United Kingdom by Phoenix and in the United States by Pamela Dorman in May, and it begins in late 1987.

Cora is in an abusive marriage and has just had a baby boy when the novel opens, and the book is built on a structural device: the child is given a different name in three versions of the story, and each version follows the family through the years afterwards. The mother's circumstances, the people around the household and the boy's own life all change according to which name is chosen, and the novel keeps the same people and the same house while the outcomes diverge.

Knapp writes the three strands as a single continuous account, so the reader is always comparing one version with another, and the same arguments recur with different outcomes. The book was published as a debut, and it was widely reviewed for its structure, which is the main reason it is discussed.