Editing Great Expectations (section)

=== Pip's name ===
Dickens famously created comic and telling names for his characters,<ref>Elizabeth Hope Gordon, "The Naming of Characters in the Books of Charles Dickens". ''University of Nebraska Studies in Language, Literature, and Criticism'', January 1917. pp. 1–35.</ref> but in ''Great Expectations'' he goes further. The first sentence of the novel establishes that Pip's proper name is Philip Pirrip—the wording of his father's gravestone—which "my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip". The name Philip Pirrip (or Pirrip) is never again used in the novel. In Chapter 18, when he receives his expectation from an anonymous benefactor, the first condition attached to it is "that you always bear the name of Pip".

In Chapter 22, when Pip establishes his friendship with Herbert Pocket, he attempts to introduce himself as Philip. Herbert immediately rejects the name: {{" '}}I don't take to Philip,' said he, smiling, 'for it sounds like a moral boy out of the spelling-book{{' "}} and decides to refer to Pip exclusively as Handel: {{" '}}Would you mind Handel for a familiar name? There's a charming piece of music by Handel, called the ''[[The Harmonious Blacksmith|Harmonious Blacksmith]]''<nowiki>'</nowiki>". The only other place he is referred to as Philip is in Chapter 44, when he receives a letter addressed to "Philip Pip" from his friend Wemmick, which says "DON'T GO HOME".