EN
The paper explores the functions of names of fictional characters, like Emma Bovary, at various levels of fictional discourse: the author suggests an analysis of their textual, paratextual, intertextual and metatextual use, as well as of the negative existential claims which include fictional names. In polemics with widely shared views he argues that proper interpretation of neither of these uses requires introducing fictional characters as abstract entities into our ontology and that neither of them is (typically) made in the mode of pretense.