Why might Nabokov have chosen to name his protagonist “Humbert Humbert”? Does the name’s parodic double rumble end up distancing us from its owner’s depravity? Is it harder to take evil seriously when it goes under an outlandish name? What uses, comic and poetic, does Nabokov make of this name in the course of Lolita?
The name is truly ridiculous; I wonder how he can be taken seriously, and I think that’s the point of the name. However I don’t see that it really distances us from his depravity but somehow underscores it.
I smiled when I first saw the name, Humbert Humbert. Having finished the book, however, I’m left with the feeling that the name is indicative of Humbert’s sense that he is a person within a person - one showing a type of personality that others would rally to and accept; the other, continually plotting how the deception would be disbursed and watching how it all would lead to the planned and desired end. I don’t recall how Nabokov expressed the comical or poetic use of the name, but beyond the joke it was terrifying to think of someone solely operating within their singular mind’s games.
The double name initially makes Humbert seem less like a traditional villain—it satirizes him and undermines his seriousness. But this effect is purposeful: Nabokov uses the name to draw us into Humbert’s unreliable world, so that when the mask slips, the horror is even sharper. The outlandish name isn’t a sign of moral lightness; it lures us in and complicates our response to evil.