The Handmaids tale

Names

There is a notable absence of real names in this book. Aside from the professors in the "Historical Notes," it's debatable whether we ever hear a character's real name.

The Handmaids are all referred to by names that signify the Commanders they serve: Offred, Ofglen, Ofwarren, Ofcharles, etc. These names are "patronymic, composed of the possessive preposition and the first name of the gentleman in question," They reveal nothing about the Handmaids, except the absence of their own identities and personhood.

Similarly, even though the Aunts have individual, feminine names, they aren't their real names either. They've been renamed by the administration in references to domestic products- Aunt Jemima (Historical Notes).

The professors speculate in the "Historical Notes" that the narrator is trying to protect the people she loves by using pseudonyms for them. However, these pseudonyms may not be arbitrary. "Luke," the name she uses for her husband, could be a Biblical reference to Saint Luke. The name she uses for her best friend, "Moira," is an Irish version of "Mary" and can thus be seen as a reference to the Virgin Mary or Mary Magdalene.

At one point the seem to asks God to reveal a name too: "I wish you would tell me Your Name, the real one I mean". Or is she asking us the reader?

Significantly, the narrator's daughter and mother are never named.

The narrator calls her real name her "shining name" (14.38), which she reveals to Nick but never to us. At least one reviewer believes clues in the text point to it, however. Mary McCarthy observes in the New York Times that "we are never told [the narrator's] own, real name in so many words, but my textual detective work says it is June".
The narrator lists several women's names in the first chapter, at the women's center, and we hear them all again during the book except for the last one, June. If "June" is the narrator's real name, that too has significance: the month of June was named after the Roman goddess Juno, who ruled over marriages.