The poetry of Giovanni Giudici (1924-2011) is characterised by an autobiographical mode, which may appear more distinctively in some works (La vita in versi, Mondadori 1965, Autobiologia, Mondadori 1968, Quanto spera di campare Giovanni, Garzanti 1993), but is a latent figure in all his writing. Observing the peculiarity of his poetic voice, and taking into account a traditional correspondence between the narrating self and his proper name, this paper describes Giudici’s ways of defying this critical assumption, hanging between anonymity and a redundant presentation of personal/fictional traits. Given the etymological relevance between persona and maschera in Giudici’s poetry, the article holds a twofold aim. On the one side, it intends to uncover a general theory of names, looking at the numerous occurrences of others’ names (more significantly women’s) and their rhetorical configuration; on the other side, it shows Giudici’s disguised mode of self-addressing, exploiting the literary and popular origins of ‘Giovanni’. In particular, the article compares Giudici’s consolidated strategies of self-naming in a series of poems (Pascoli, 1981) and in an unpublished poem (Autoritratto, 1959), here presented for the first time.