Comment by aidenn0
5 hours ago
I've not read Dostoevsky, but there is a similar issue in Japanese literature. The same person might be referred to in as many as 4 different ways, and on top of that you are supposed to infer who the speaker is by the mode of address (and other context clues like personal pronouns), so dialog tags are seldom used.
I'm bad with names to begin with, so I usually make a chart to keep side characters straight.
The same thing happens in English literature of Dostoevsky's period - upper class characters might be referred to by substantive title (sometimes in two different forms), subsidiary title, courtesy title, surname, first name, job/rank/office, epithet, nickname, or even pet name.
To add confusion, the choice of which to use is usually context-dependent (time period, age, status, situation, relationship between characters) but sometimes the author will switch between, say, title and surname within the same paragraph simply as a matter of style or to avoid repetition.