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Abstract: The article deals with the etymology of personal names and surnames in Andrey Platonov's story «The Juvenile Sea» (1931–1932). The purpose of the article is to specify the meaning of personal names and surnames of the characters, and to determine their place and role in narration. The story abounds in charactonyms, or «speaking names» which are descriptions of their bearers and denote essential properties of the characters’ disposition and internal life and serve as semantic reference points for the readers. The article describes some models of character nomination and provides a new etymological characteristic of personal character names in the story «The Juvenile Sea». The author singles out the following features of character names: noun groups connected with descriptive nominations of male and female characters associated with gender, age, occupation and nationality are in preposition, as a rule, preceding a proper name. References to profession or position are used by Platonov as means of social typification. Along with proper names, common nouns form a general paradigmatic series. It is possible to establish the following order in Platonov’s nominative process: abstract nomination (hyperonym: reference to profession, gender, age, social characteristics) — direct concrete nomination (hyponym: personal name). It is stated that the writer’s character names creation originates not only from the national tradition of nomination but also from reality. Semantics of the character names in Platonov's story reflect the emotive-evaluative estimation of the author and his characters to reality, and the linguistic worldview typical of the epoch of basic changes in the life and consciousness of popular masses and in the historical image of the country.