One-Letter Name

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.

"You may want to add a few more vowels into your name there, Z."

—Sebastian Stark, Shark

When you take Only One Name to the extreme, this is the result. Most often a Code Name.

For some reason letters from the second half of the alphabet are much more likely to be chosen. Even people who change their names to something starting with A to get to the top of an alphabetical list seem to never use just A.

Compare You Are Number Six, when the name is a number. Not to Be Confused With One-Letter Title.

Examples of One-Letter Name include:

Given and Entire Names

Anime and Manga

  • Count D and his relatives in Pet Shop of Horrors.
  • D, the alien spy from Project A-ko. However, it may be just a code name.
  • D from Dual! Parallel Trouble Adventure.
  • The title character of Tekkaman Blade is nicknamed D-boy. In the OVA, he has taken to signing his name "D", and Yumi simply calls him that. (It's actually "Dangerous", for doing a lot of reckless things early in the series.)
  • The title character of Vampire Hunter D.
  • G, the Big Bad of Real Bout High School, who honestly doesn't remember his name after the years of psychological and physical conditioning he was subjected to since he was a boy in order to become the perfect bodyguard. As far as he's concerned, it's a placeholder; He'll find out what his name is if it's the last thing he does.
  • G., the first Vongola Storm Guardian from Katekyo Hitman Reborn.
  • Phantom Thief G? from D.Gray-Man
  • Soldat J, from GaoGaiGar
  • J from Heat Guy J
  • J from Bobobo-Bo Bo-bobo. You know, the one with the garlic/onion (the heroes can never decide this) for a head?
  • In the Diamond/Pearl saga of the Pokémon anime, a villain known as Pokemon Hunter J and a one-shot filler character known as O were introduced.
  • Gravitation's K. (Although his actual name is revealed later.)
  • K in Puni Puni Poemy.
  • L from Death Note. A handful of other characters use one-letter codenames at some point, as well, but, as revealed in the "how to read" book, L actually is his first name. The full name being L Lawliet.
  • L-sama from The Slayers novel afterwords. Though this is an abbreviation of L.O.N. or Lord of Nightmares.
  • Ixpellia from the post-Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha StrikerS Time Skip Sound Stage X, whose nickname of Ix/Ikusu is transcribed in English as "X" in the CD booklet.
  • The main antagonist of the third Tenchi Muyo! Ryo-Ohki OVA goes by Z, remarking that his real name, Z-0001332536893, is too long.
  • Fanon often refers to Mazinger Z as simply "Z" for the sake of time. Great Mazinger's name is reduced to simply "Great". Oddly, Getter Robo G is usually called "Getter G" instead of just "G".
  • The Alphabets, Major Eberbach's subordinates in From Eroica with Love, are each known by one single letter as a codename. The Major always seems to have 28 of them around despite having sent some to Alaska. (Also, the letters are pronounced like German alphabets.)
  • In Naruto, a lot of people from the Village Hidden in the Clouds: The Raikage is "A", his brother is "B" (though everyone called him "Killer Bee"), he has an aide named "C" and they sent a shinobi after Sasuke, who was called "J", and an incidental character was named "F". In this case, these are code-names/ranks (that may have fully replaced the characters' original names which are never revealed). For example, B is given the name after being chosen as the combat partner for A when he was promoted to head of the village and it's armed forces (implying the Raikage is always called "A" and paired with an assistant/bodyguard called "B").
  • The Gundam Engineers Doctor J, Professor G, Doktor S, Instructor H, and Master O. The sequel novel Frozen Teardrop has Trowa and Quatre taking similar aliases Doktor T and Instructor W, as well as revealing Doctor J's real name: Jay Nul
  • Z is the name of the villain in an upcoming[when?] One Piece movie—nothing is known about him except that he's incredibly strong and is a pirate.

Comic Books

Film

  • G, of the movie Holy Man (played by Eddie Murphy) - the titular character, in this case.
  • In Envy, Christopher Walken's hobo character calls himself "the J-Man."
  • Men in Black agents, including Agents J, K, L, and Zed,[1] along with almost everyone else with the organization. The third movie adds an "AA", but it's only in a Bad Future anyway.
    • Interestingly, the names appear to be based on the first letter of the first name (James, Kevin, Laura, Michael). This begs the question - are there only 26 agents in the MIB? What happens when two agents have their first names start on the same letter?
    • The animated series also has Alpha, one of the founding members of MIB and K's mentor, before he went rogue. When he first meets J, he introduces himself as agent A. When J later mentions A to K and Zed, Zed points out that there is no agent A.
  • M from James Bond. Based on the Real Life head of MI6, who goes by the codename "C".

Bond: I had no idea it stood for-
M: Utter one more syllable and I'll have you killed.

  • V for Vendetta: "Voilà! In view, a humble vaudevillian veteran, cast vicariously as both victim and villain by the vicissitudes of fate. This visage, no mere veneer of vanity, is a vestige of the vox populi, now vacant, vanished. However, this valorous visitation of a bygone vexation stands vivified, and has vowed to vanquish these venal and virulent vermin vanguarding vice and vouchsafing the violently vicious and voracious violation of volition! The only verdict is vengeance; a vendetta held as a votive, not in vain, for the value and veracity of such shall one day vindicate the vigilant and the virtuous. Verily, this vichyssoise of verbiage veers most verbose, so let me simply add that it's my very good honour to meet you and you may call me V."
  • Willem Dafoe's character in New Rose Hotel is known only as X.
  • X, leader of the alien invaders in Godzilla: Final Wars.
  • Woody Allen's character Z in Antz (short for Z-4195).
  • Z (pronounced Zed) from (and short for) Zardoz.
  • Professor Z, The Dragon of Cars 2.
  • The film The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen has M, who is the one who gathers the League and gives them their task. Of course, it turns out that M stands for Moriarty.

Literature

  • In the Bourne series, Jason Bourne went by the military-alphabet name Delta when he was in the Medusa program in Vietnam.
  • The protagonist of "The Castle" by Franz Kafka is known only as K, making this Older Than Television.
    • The protagonist of Kafka's "The Trial" was named Joseph K.
  • In Sputnik Sweetheart, the narrator is only ever known by the letter K.
  • As the title probably suggests, the heroine of the erotic classic The Story of O is known only by her initial.
  • S (aka "The Stooge"), the protagonist of Paul Pope's sci-fi graphic novel, Heavy Liquid.
  • V from Vegan Virgin Valentine. Her full name is Vivienne Vail Valentine, so you can see why she shortens it.
  • To Kill a Mockingbird has a bit character called X Billups. Most people didn't believe that was his full name until he was asked to spell it during a court case.
  • John Hackworth's nemesis Dr. X in The Diamond Age. (A slight subversion in that his actual name is quite long, but it is very hard to pronounce, so everyone just calls him Dr. X. Interestingly, his Chinese name is written with only one character as well.)
  • 6 and @ from Max Berry's book Syrup. When 6 was born, her parents named her 0 (zero), then on her first birthday, she was renamed 1, up until they were killed when she was, yup, six years old. The name stuck. As for @, well, it's not explained, but 6 says she only did it to copy her.
  • In The Twenty-One Balloons by William Pène du Bois, the island of Krakatoa is settled by twenty families, who take on the letters A through T as names (e.g., the man who founded the island is only known as Mr. M, his wife is Mrs. M, and their children are M-1 and M-2). When the protagonist is stranded there, he asks if they would like to start referring to him as Mr. U; they decline, as it would lead to pronoun confusion. No mention is made of how they manage to non-confusingly talk about the I family, though at least I is only a pronoun in the subjective case.
  • Members of the Audubon Ballroom in the Honorverse use X as a surname, though most have a different legal name.
  • O from The Story of O.

Live-Action TV

  • Mister F from Arrested Development.
  • G Callen from NCIS: Los Angeles (his first name accidentally vanished when he was put into foster care). When they finally track it down, the building explodes before Callen can open the drawer.
  • Horatio Caine, usually just H, from CSI: Miami.
  • Played for laughs in Herman's Head. Jay goes to a Sex Addicts meeting and to maintain his confidentiality declares he will introduce himself by the first letter of his name.
  • Q from Star Trek. Since it's used for both the character and the species to which he belongs, things can get confusing when other Qs show up. (Though it's less so in print: the second Q from Deja Q is rendered as Q2, and Q's son is q.)
    • An Expanded Universe trilogy adds another god-like being named 0. That's right, a One Digit Name. There's also <*> (that energy cloud from TOS causing humans and Klingons to fight), a One Asterisk Name.
  • Mr. X, Mulder's second Mysterious Informant from The X-Files.
  • Lord Zedd from Power Rangers. His Mooks had this letter on their breastplates.
    • Power Rangers SPD had a character named Z, short for Elizabeth.
    • Power Rangers RPM has a character known only as Dr. K, later explained as being because she grew up in a secret government think-tank codenamed "Alphabet Soup". Presumably Dr. A through Dr. J had non-Ranger based areas of expertise.
  • One episode of Shark involved a fashion designer named Z Pruitt. He was much ridiculed.
  • Doctor Who has a villain named Omega.
  • Get Smart: When Max and the Chief swap roles due to a bureaucratic foul-up, the Chief goes back to his old designation of Agent Q (he joined CONTROL before they switched to numbers).

Music

  • E from the band Eels, who used to also make solo albums under that name, until he decided it made his music too hard to track down. He has gone by his real name though - his autobiography Things The Grandchildren Should Know and the soundtrack to the film Levity are both credited to Mark Oliver Everett. He initially started being called E in high school because he just knew too many other people named Mark.
  • In Vivian Stanshall's comedy LP Sir Henry at Ndidi's Kraal, the eponymous Sir Henry Rawlinson mounts an expedition to Africa, the "dark incontinent". He can't remember his native bearers' names, so "to their - ahem - cheery delight, I numbered the sods. The last twenty-seven I named after the letters of our alphabet. The twenty-seventh - knew you were going to ask me that! - was a question mark."
  • Hello! Project former group W. Quite tricky to search for their material, if it wasn't for one of their alternate names, Double You.
  • Ian "H" Watkins of Steps.
  • The alternative rock band A, though they were originally called Grand Designs.

Tabletop Games

Video Games

  • A from Digimon: Digital Card Battle. It's a pseudonym.
  • D in Another Code: Two Memories (a.k.a. Trace Memory). D turns out to have been a nickname. His real name is Daniel.
  • At one point during Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines, you run into a thin-blood named E, who asks you to find out about thin-bloods and rescue his girlfriend and sire, Lily. The Malkavian run lampshades this at one point, referring to him in conversation with Lily as "the letter that comes before F and G".
  • The mutant form of William Birkin in Resident Evil 2 is officially called "G", but most players simply refer to him by his real name.
    • The Tyrant from the same game was also given the nickname of "Mr. X" in the American version.
  • G from House of the Dead, who, despite being the only one with such a unique name, is pretty ordinary for a secret agent.
    • Becomes a Running Gag in House Of The Dead: Overkill, where G constantly refuses to answer what the letter means whenever people ask him.
  • G from Bust-A-Move 4. He's an old wizard with evil plans, but he acts like a senile old coot to throw people off.
  • H, an otherwise unremarkable Mook from the video game Fighting Force. Also features an Agent X toward the end.
  • Double H from Beyond Good and Evil, though this is just a codename, his real name is Hubb
  • J from Final Fight.
  • Agent J from Elite Beat Agents.
  • Julius Belmont from Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow refers to himself as J until he regains his memory.
  • K′ from King of Fighters (the apostrophe-like symbol, pronounced "dash" or "prime", is the mathematical notation for derivatives, a hint of his origin as a genetically altered clone of Kyo Kusanagi).
  • Mr. L from Super Paper Mario, though that's not his real name. He's Luigi much to the surprise of no one.
  • Inverted in the PC game N: most people think the main character ninja's name is N, but actually the ninja is nameless and N represents "the way of the ninja", a system of beliefs to which the ninja subscribes. These details are found on N's "Story" page.
  • N from Pokémon Black and White. (The Japanese games actually use the English letter as his name, a rarity in a JRPG. It's short for Natural, as in natural number, so it makes sense. It's been theorized that his supposed father Ghetsis has gone through thirteen other children, letters A-M, in his attempts to create the peculiar kind of idealistic Tyke Bomb he needed to take over Unova.
  • O is the name of a minor NPC in Planescape: Torment. He's not just any old O, but part of the "divine alphabet." Whatever that means, he can give you a permanent boost to your Wisdom if you ask the right questions, before vanishing.
  • Dr. O from the "Old World Blues" DLC for Fallout: New Vegas. Only not really - while everyone calls him O, his actual name is You Are Number Six.
  • Q from Street Fighter III 3rd Strike.
  • R from Mega Man X Command Mission.
    • And Epsilon (E), the game's villain.
    • Technically, Sigma (∑) is also one letter name, but with a Greek letter.
    • As is Omega (Ω.)
    • The Biometals in Mega Man ZX are all named "Model [Single Letter]."
    • Also, I think there was something about a main character... started with an X...
      • His full name was "Mega Man X", but he was almost always called X.
    • Technically, Zero is a one-number name (0).
  • Mr. X and Robot Y from the Streets of Rage games.
  • 3 from 3 in Three (though she's an anthropomorphisation of the actual ASCII character "3", so this is as much a job description as it is a name).

Web Comics

Web Original

  • Coach Z, from Homestar Runner. Didn't start out this way, as his name was spelled "Coach Zee" in the original book of Where My Hat Is At?, presumably to prevent his name from being pronounced "Coach Zed".
    • Whoa. Coach Zed. That's way cooler. I'm gonna start calling him that too and maybe he won't suck so bad!

Western Animation

  • Substitute teacher Mr. E in Recess. Helps his Badass mystique that gets him to cow the rest of the class into doing what he wants (in a good way!)... Except for the resident idealist T.J. (Theodore Jasper, in case you were wondering. He's not an example of this trope, he just uses it as a better-sounding nickname. Can you blame him?) They find common ground in the end anyway.

T.J.: So, can I ask what the E stands for?
Mr. E: No.
T.J.: You are so cool.

General Specific: I don't want an "X Agent"! I want a current agent!
Private Public: The "X" is put in to indicate mysteriousness rather than his job status sir.
General Specific: Well why can't he choose another letter? Like "K"?
Private Public: "K" isn't as mysterious a letter as "X", sir.
General Specific: What about "L"? "L" is prety mysterious! [waving fingers] Llllllllllllll... Lllllllll!!!
Narrator: So as General Specific re-acquaints himself with the alphabet...

Real Life

  • The head of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (a.k.a. MI6) is always codenamed "C".
    • As Al Franken points out while talking about the Downing Street Memos in The Truth (with jokes), there are a number of other individuals in British government given single letter codenames. He mentions a meeting involving "C, Z, R, and a group called 'the vowels'."
  • In botanical publications, Carl von Linné (the father of modern botanical nomenclature) usually gets his name abbreviated to just "L."
  • The artist formerly known as "The Artist Formerly Known as Prince" had, during the time when he was known by the quoted name, an unpronounceable symbol as his name. Said symbol, while not a alphabetical letter, still had to be printed during this time, and Warner Brothers had to send out floppy disks of a special font that included the symbol so that print media could print it.
  • There are several one-letter geographic names, including:
    • D, "the world's shortest" river in Oregon.
    • E, a township in Maine.
    • Å, Nordic for "brook", a dozen places in Scandinavia. There are also 249 Norwegians with this as a surname, spelled "Aa". It's pronounced "awe", by the way.
    • Y, a commune in northern France. Also a "census-designated place" of the same name in Alaska. And a short river in Siberia.
    • Mount E, a volcano in Northern Japan.
  • A writer for Wired named his daughter "E" with the intent of letting her choose her own name later on. She ironically decided to stay as "E".
  • ? of the band ? and the Mysterions, although ?'s name[2] is normally rendered as "Question Mark" in interviews.
  • Harry Truman's name is in full "Harry S. Truman". Besides having the name "Harry"—usually a nickname for Henry or Harold—as his actual first name,[3] the "S" famously doesn't stand for anything. His middle name was really just "S.". This was apparently an old Scots-Irish tradition, revived by Truman's family because they couldn't decide if they wanted his middle name was to be "Solomon" (after his maternal grandfather Solomon Young) or "Shipp" (after his paternal grandfather Anderson Shipp Truman). However, the Urban Legend that his name was "S" without a period is false—he almost always spelled his middle name with a period, despite it not standing for anything—the legend comes from a joke that the famously folksy Truman once told the press.

Surnames

Anime and Manga

Literature

  • Played with with Lawrence Ecks in the story "ARM" by Larry Niven. Protagonist Gil Hamilton suggests that his family name might have been "X" nearly two centuries earlier, in a deliberate imitation of Malcolm X.

Video Games

Real Life

  • In Real Life, O is a genuine Belgian surname.
    • Ditto for Hispanic countries, with some people called "de la O".
  • Mr. T pities the fools who haven't added him to this list.
    • He legally changed it from Lawrence Tureaud so people would have to call him "Mister".
  • Y (or I, or Yi) is the second most common family name in Korea, shared by about 20% of the population. Pronounced "ee". In much of the West, however, they take up the more traditional "Lee" (or "Rhee", or... okay, forget it) just to make things less confusing (it matches up better with the Chinese pronunciations for the same character, and it is not incorrect: the traditional spelling is in fact "Ri", a pronunciation still retained in much of the north).
    • So, in a moment of great drama, if you wanted to have an epic Say My Name moment with a person by this surname, you could literally shout out "Riiiiiiiiiiiiii!"
    • The Korean surname Lee/I would use two letters, but one character. The majority of Korean surnames are one character, but made up of 2-3 letters. It is impossible for any words to be one letter in Korean.
  • A valid Korean name is A O. A double dose of One-Letter Name!
  • Malcolm X.
  1. ↑ (i.e., 'Z' in any English-speaking country except the U.S., and French-speaking countries as well)
  2. ↑ It's widely believed that his birth name was Rudy Martinez, but his legal name was "?."
  3. ↑ He was named after his maternal uncle Harrison "Harry" Young, but that doesn't change the fact that his name was Harry, not Harrison
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