Abstract
The essay argues that in the twentieth century North-American literature names often become both the locus where individual identity and social expectations clash, and the means through which the author tries to dislocate old myths and introduce new ones into the culture. Starting from this, the essay examines Hilda Doolittle’s modernist novels and poems in order to highlight the many ways in which she explores multiple authorial identities and the mythmaking potential of names, acronyms and heteronyms.