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Personal names stem from multiple logics of attribution and variation. Oftentimes, their occurrences have been ascribed to systems of heritage, if not inheritance. Yet while names are indeed given, they can also be taken. Emphasis is laid here on the borrowing of names. Upon close reading, Ottoman archives from the turn of the twentieth century shed light on how the Ottoman government dealt with the use of pseudonyms along various legal, administrative, and political lines. This study does not only highlight the identification procedures that late Ottoman bureaucrats had at their disposal: one easily notices that their handling of names smoothly accommodated the changing, exchanging, and sparing of names. Ottoman naming treatments hence drew on a metonymic regime alongside the need for fixative authentication. It provided as many ways to make a name for oneself as it did (for those longing for anonymity) to be de-named and re-named.