What is the usual English name for the narrator of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground?

The narrator of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground is usually called the Underground Man.

The character is an unnamed retired civil servant living in Saint Petersburg. He presents his thoughts through a bitter, intensely self-conscious monologue, especially in the opening section known as “Underground.”

“The Underground Man” is a descriptive English label rather than a conventional personal name. In the original Russian, the narrator is also unnamed, which helps make him a symbolic voice for alienation, resentment, and opposition to simplified theories of human behavior.

The novella was published in 1864 and is often treated as a major precursor to existentialist literature. Its second part, “Apropos of the Wet Snow,” turns from abstract argument to remembered encounters and humiliations.