Mantel was writing historical fiction and had no say in the christening, but she embraced her cards. “What do I do?” she said in 2014 at the Cheltenham Literature Festival, on the difficulties of adapting her books for television. “Every second man in Henry VIII’s England is called Thomas. At any one time, there are five Thomases on the page, all shouting at each other. The only thing to do is let the reader in on it. Admit the difficulty … Because as soon as you decide this is too complicated for the viewer, or history is an inconvenient shape and can’t we tidy it up a bit, then you fall into a cascade of errors which ends in nonsense.”

But what if a novelist were to write a fictional story of a Tudor tyrant? Only a sadomasochist would name five men Thomas. Unless, of course, your novel is set in the looking-glass world of Macondo. In Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, which Netflix is set to adapt, the 17 sons whom Colonel Aureliano Buendía fathers during his war travels by 17 women are all baptized Aureliano. And all but one are murdered by the colonel’s enemies. The hyperbolic naming could be dismissed as another magical-realism stunt—except that it is curiously convincing. First, because it is breathtakingly realistic for those mothers to give their sons the first name of their illustrious father because they can’t carry his surname. And second, because García Márquez treats the serial massacre not as a video-game splatterfest but as the appalling family tragedy that it is. As the telegrams announcing the deaths of the Aurelianos arrive in Macondo, the boys’ aunt Amaranta brings out the family ledger, and like a meticulous accountant, draws lines through her nephews’ names, until only the eldest remains. Nothing evokes the looming obliteration of the Buendías more chillingly than the crossing out of Aureliano 16 times over.

Read: How Gabriel García Márquez created a world in a sentence

One writer who uses the same-name trope masterfully, both as a reflection of life and for dramatic tension, is le grand écrivain of realism: Leo Tolstoy. I was finally spurred to read Anna Karenina after coming across this observation in The Possessed, Elif Batuman’s travelogue into Russian literature.

Anna’s lover and her husband had the same first name (Alexei). Anna’s maid and daughter were both called Anna, and Anna’s son and Levin’s half brother were both Sergei. The repetition of names struck me as remarkable, surprising, and true to life.

To have a scattering of Annas and Sergeis in a Russian novel is an authentic touch. But to give husband and lover the same first name is a florid ruse that enables Tolstoy to indulge his moral snobbery at adultery and, conversely, to expose the illusion of choice within which Anna is trapped. She refers to this cruel coincidence only once, in that anguished scene that every reader has been secretly hoping for: a confrontation between her and the two Alexeis. It unfolds after Anna has given birth to her lover’s daughter and is almost at death’s door. Crying out for forgiveness, she calls her husband Alexei, and not the formal Alexei Alexandrovich, for the first and last time.

For Alexei—I am speaking of Alexei Alexandrovich (what a strange and awful thing that both are Alexei, isn’t it?)—Alexei would not refuse me.

Moved by her remorse, Anna’s husband (whose family name is Karenin) forgives her. In this scene, Anna is at the peak of her powers and has complete control over the two Alexeis, with one sobbing against her skin, and the other into his hands. Rounding off this tableau are the two other Annas, the loyal maid (who’s known as Annushka throughout) and the newborn, who will be christened Anna (her precarious social status being no different from the 17 Aurelianos). Anna Karenina will never have the same power again, and the two Alexeis will parallel her narrow life like the train tracks onto which she eventually flings herself. Karenin, who is strangely enchanted by his wife’s daughter, will adopt her from the bereft Alexei Kirillovich Vronsky, thus officially making her Anna Karenina. The little girl will repeat, in reverse, the journey her mother made from one Alexei to the other.