The article is devoted to the study of the semantics of proper names in the stories "An Affair of Honor" and "Christmas" by Vladimir Nabokov. Topicality of the study is due to the emergence of a large number of studies devoted to the most striking and obvious cases related to the analysis of the semantics of proper names in Vladimir Nabokov, to an insufficient analysis of the nominations in the texts of the small form. The work uses the methods of semantic and intertextual analysis. The analysis of the names of each character of the stories "An Affair of Honor" and "Christmas" is carried out. It turns out that the peculiarity of the story "Scoundrel" is "pairedness", which manifests itself at all levels - from name to composition. The names of characters pairwise located in the story are investigated. On the material of the story "Christmas", the phenomenon of an incomplete name is studied - one character has a name but lacks last name (footman Ivan), another has a last name but not name - Sleptsov, and the name of Sleptsov’s son is not mentioned at all in the story. The authors conclude that in small form the hero does not need to have both a first name and a last name. One thing is enough - if it clearly and clearly characterizes the image, then the absence of one of the components is not significant. The image of the main character is analysed, it is proved that a hero by the name of Sleptsov has moral and aesthetic blindness. The special mechanisms of correlation of the name system with the system of characters are revealed, an attempt is made to classify proper names in Vladimir Nabokov's work. The authors propose classifying names according to the mechanism for implementing the name in the text (one-step and two-step mechanism) and according to the method of formulation (speaking name, key-name, pun-name). It turns out that Vladimir Nabokov uses the same mechanisms and regularities in building a name system in both small and large form, however, it is in stories that these mechanisms are formed and first used by Nabokov. The question is raised about the need for further use of the method of analysis of proper names in Vladimir Nabokov.