Question: I am in the midst of writing my second [NaNo](http://www.nanowrimo.org) novel, and I have encountered a problem I didn't anticipate. It is similar to this question, about [changing a character's name](https://writers.stackexchange.com/questions/5292/how-best-to-handle-revealing-a-main-characters-name-midway-through-a-long-story) in the middle of a story, but the situation in my story is different enough that I think it will need a different answer.

In the first part of the story, we meet the protagonist, Nicene. After a second part (which isn't written yet), she is discovered unconscious on the streets by Shadow. During this period, the story is from Shadow's point of view and she is 'the woman'. After she regains consciousness, she tells him that her name is Cherry, and so the narrative continues with her named as Cherry. The trouble is, I am sliding back into her point of view, but I haven't let the reader know that this woman is actually Nicene. 

I don't really want it to be a surprise *to the reader* when they find out who she is, so I have made several connections between the prior part and the current part, and Shadow has made it obvious that he doesn't believe that Cherry is her real name. I am on the verge of revealing her honorifics, which are important and should be a surprise, but might also further confuse the reader.

I am stuck on how to transition from the viewpoint of someone who doesn't know her real name ('Cherry') back to her ('Nicene'), because Nicene certainly doesn't think of herself as Cherry—that's just an alter ego—but the reader might not have realized who she really is.

Is there a good way of handling this?

Answer: 
A few possibilities:

* Tag Nicene with an utterly distinctive physical feature. When Shadow observes that physical feature, readers will know that it is Nicene.
* Give Nicene some tag phrase, and have Cherry use the phrase.
* Write an earlier scene in Nicene's POV, where she introduces herself to someone as Cherry.
* In the scenes from Shadow's POV, introduce a character who knows Cherry as Nicene. Or maybe who vaguely remembers meeting her before, and can't remember her name, but knows it is not Cherry.
* Make it clear that Cherry knows that her name is not really Cherry. That may be enough of a hint to carry the reader across the transition.
Make the situation, in which Shadow discovers Cherry, unmistakeably the same as the one in which Nicene was left at the end of part one. E.g.:

> 
> **Part 1**
> 
> 
> ...
>  Nicene is clubbed on the head in a dark alley behind the king's palace and falls unconscious between the green dust bins of the king.
> 
> 
> **Part 2**
> 
> 
> ...
> 
> 
> **Part 3**
> 
> 
> Shadow discovered the woman in a dark alley behind the king's palace, where she was lying onconscious between the green dust bins of the king, a bloody wound showing where she had been clubbed on her head. When he asked her who she was, the woman hesitated briefly, as if trying to judge if she could trust him, and then told him: "My name is Cherry." He didn't know if that was her real name, but he didn't care.
> 
> 
> 

I'm overdoing it in this example, using the exact same words and having Shadow wonder about her name (suggesting to the reader to think about the name, too). In a less blatant way, this is what I have seen other authors do quite often. It is the typical technique to pick up the action from a previous chapter in a novel with multiple viewpoints.