The article considers lexical ways of expressing attitudes to the named object in the novel “Black City” by Boris Akunin. We focus on nicknames and pseudonyms, which traditionally perform not so much identifying as characterizing and stylistic functions in fiction. Nicknames and pseudonyms, being a secondary nomination of a person, are intended to emphasize his or her individuality, true or desirable character traits and behavior. These functions are clearly manifested in the artificially created reality of a literary work. In a literary text, we find both the laws of linguistics, according to which onyms are created and function, and the laws of poetics, through which proper names enter into semantic-stylistic relations with other linguistic units, performing text-forming and stylistic functions, and participating in the character image formation. All of them, their forms, meanings and associations, become inseparably connected with the author’s idea; so to deeper penetrate into it, we need to analyze the onomastic vocabulary. We have divided the collected material into two groups: nicknames and pseudonyms. The criterion for dividing these concepts is the authorship of the name: nicknames are usually invented by other people, while pseudonyms are created by the people themselves. In each group, the analysis of the characters’ secondary names is carried out using the data from the text of the novel and, if necessary, extra-linguistic information is used, as well as the information from other texts in the Erast Fandorin series. If possible, the article provides motivation for the nomination of each name. At the end of the article, conclusions are drawn on the semantic and stylistic role of nicknames and pseudonyms in the text of the novel, we show their link to the plot line of the work and determine the role of the secondary nomination in expressing the attitude to the named object in the fictional text.