What is the name of the orphan boy in Oliver Twist?

The orphan boy in Oliver Twist is named Oliver Twist. He is the novel's title character and central figure, a child born in a parish workhouse whose mother dies during childbirth.

The parish beadle, Mr Bumble, gives the boy the surname Twist from the workhouse's alphabetical naming system. Oliver grows up in harsh conditions, where the children are poorly fed and treated cruelly. His famous request for “more” gruel leads the authorities to label him troublesome and offer him as an apprentice.

After escaping an undertaker's household, Oliver travels to London and encounters the Artful Dodger, Fagin, and a gang of child pickpockets. Dickens uses Oliver's vulnerability to expose poverty, child exploitation, workhouse abuse, and the criminalisation of disadvantaged children in Victorian England.

The novel was serialised from 1837 to 1839 and published in book form in 1838. Nicholas Nickleby and David Copperfield are also Dickens protagonists, but neither is the orphan boy in this story.