Best part of this is that Russians have three names (a first name, surname, and a patronymic) and they love using nicknames. So the main character is Rodion (first name) Romanovitch (patronymic) Raskolnikov (surname), but can (and is) called by any of those three names. He's also got nicknames like Rodya, Rodenka, and Rodka. So this deranged individual (who decided to call Raskolnikov "Pete" I guess) is going to be hopelessly confused when somebody starts referring to Rodya, and he'll think the book is filled with like five times as many characters as it actually is.

If your cracker ass can remember hundreds of pokemon names for the duration of a game, you can remember a dozen russian names for the duration of a book

huh. I mean, I have made charts to try to keep track of families and shit in byzantine politics novels, but, uh... huh.

when this is done by the author to obfuscate a fictional portrayal of real people, it's called a roman a clef https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_%C3%A0_clef

typical anglo L

I'd love to see what he does with 100 years of solitude. There are only like 4 names for 15 different characters

If you don't give the characters racist caricature like names how can I keep them straight?

Cannot imagine your first reaction to name-memory difficulty being "imma give em white guy names"

I keep a digital copy on the side and Ctrl+F the character's name so I can get a refresher on them when I'm reading Dostoevsky.

Part of the problem is the 3 names as the other commenter said, and part of it is that the style of book has 100s of characters, much like a soap opera.

Crime and Punishment is my second favorite book. That said, I was confused when Raskolnikov's friend's name was randomly switched up. That's when I learned that Russians and Latinos share the having four or five names thing in common. Absolutely based tradition, though I'm surprised I remember my own name sometimes.

It's also not best advised to read that book when you're a college-aged boy short on cash. Or maybe it is...

Doing rowling naming conventions:

Axe Mcprison-ov

Mona E. Lander-ov

Norm Horseaccident-ov

Fbi Copper-ov

Liberals when the black guy isn't named "Kingsley Shacklebolt"

Also, I didn't make that shit up.

~~Roger Raskolnikov~~ just Roger lmao.

It's like a fucking mirror universe, i stopped reading the first book of their favorite series in half because i couldn't stand how absolutely idiotic the name convention was there.

Recently read A Fire Upon the Deep were half the story takes place on a planet with dog like group mind beings whose names are the combination of every member and if members die and they get a new member the name changes to include the new member, but they also use nicknames for the group beings whenever they feel like it. This person would have a great time with that book. Also book was eh but fun.

maybe like highlight the names with different colors or something until you get used to them

Nah, this is a fine thing to do and I support it heartily!

Especially recommend stuff like this when reading theory, Lenin likes to call dudes out by name and hyper specific organizations and membership etc, when those details don't really matter much for my purposes reading this 120 years later

Ive never actually gone in and replaced names, but I kind of glance at them and go "this is guy 1" and move on

Or more specifically like "opportunist leader of anti-bolshevik faction guy" etc etc. It's really not worth remembering every single name

Also, some people find remembering names hard, let alone unfamiliar ones

This is however still a funny post lol

Hello, I'm john smith jr

The content isn't difficult, however I did have difficulties with some of the content.

Isn't this pretty normal to do when translating though? I feel like a lot of books change names when they're too difficult to parse in the other language. For a super fast example of what I mean: Donald Duck isn't named Donald in other countries. His three nephews names are different as well.
Obviously if the translator didn't do it, then that's probably for a very good reason and doing bulk replaces are bound to mess things up, but the act itself seems relatively normal to me?

Brb, doing this with The Silmarillion