Several Italian collections of novellas written between the fourteenth and the end of the sixteenth centuries used framing devices, casting groups of characters as narrators of tales. These novellatori act as go-betweens between the reader and the fictional world they inhabit, and their own names provide significant clues for an understanding of the ideology of the authors who created them. These early modern collections of novellas display manifold examples of peculiar employments of proper names roughly dividable into two major typologies: on the one hand, the use of pseudonyms, aimed at concealing the real identity of the speakers; on the other hand, the display of the characters’ real names, including that of famous historical figures carrying along specific connotations related to the cultural contexts they represent. This paper examines these two main functions by bringing relevant instances of both reticence and narrative ostentation as subtle narrative strategies.