Figuring Out The Meaning Of Names In Disco Elysium

thegamer.com:

This piece contains spoilers for the entirety of Disco Elysium.

One of the first quests you assign yourself in Disco Elysium is to discover your amnesic detective’s name. As luck would have it, you’ve also somehow misplaced your police badge, and when prompted to introduce yourself to your new cop partner Kim Kitsuragi, you can blithely come up with ‘Raphaël Ambrosius Costeau’. It was a name so pretentious that it momentarily sent psychic shockwaves through Kim, leaving him stunned for a few seconds, after which he quickly regained his composure and proceeded with, well, regular conversation.

But more than just quirky nicknames, names feel like a lofty, important status in Disco Elysium, often discussed and debated, sometimes obfuscated and lost, with the weight and gravity of their meaning a subject of personal fascination. Klaasje Amandou, who has been dubbed the ‘Miss Oranje Disco Dancer’ by the detective, is probably the game’s most notable example: you’ll soon realise that Klaasje Amandou is not her real name, as the lady deftly avoids divulging any truths behind her background with a deluge of falsehoods and lies. She’s a consummate liar, quick on her feet but disarmingly attractive, and even when under duress during your interrogation of her, she still has the acuity to reveal her other names, bit by bit—first Annouk Meijer-Smit, and then Katarzine Alaczije—both of which turn out to also be fake. If you can believe it, all of these stemmed from her chequered history of committing corporate espionage in her past life, which has made her a lot of powerful enemies who essentially want her murdered. Names, in Klassje’s instance, are her way of fending off her past mistakes.

Related: Disco Elysium’s Horrific Necktie Is