What fictional name does C.S. Lewis give the protagonist of his Space Trilogy?

C.S. Lewis gives the protagonist of his Space Trilogy the fictional name Elwin Ransom.

Elwin Ransom is the central character of Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra, and That Hideous Strength. He is a philologist and university academic whose adventures take him from Earth to other worlds and into conflicts involving humanity, spiritual powers, and modern technological ambition.

Ransom is the character’s surname and Elwin his first name. He was partly inspired by Lewis’s friend and fellow scholar J.R.R. Tolkien, who encouraged Lewis’s interest in imaginative literature, although Ransom is not a direct portrait of Tolkien.

The three novels were published between 1938 and 1945. Their settings and styles differ: the first two are planetary romances, while the third returns mainly to Earth and explores a threatening scientific and bureaucratic organization. Ransom therefore connects the trilogy even as its genres shift.