I remember that it was my wife who first pointed out that she didn’t actually know the names of any of the characters while we were watching The Polar Express for the first time. I tried, for a second only, to argue with her before realising that I hadn’t picked up any of the characters’ names either. As it turns out, neither of us were going deaf or were inattentive, as the movie really goes out of its way to not name pretty much all of the main characters. Only a small handful of characters —Smokey, Steamer and Billy— are named, although the movie hardly centres around them.

The hero of the story is simply referred to as “Hero Boy”. Although he isn’t called that in the movie, it’s written in such a way that the characters don’t need names as they are never referred to, only spoken to directly. This is a carryover from the original book, in which Hero Boy isn’t named either.

In a behind-the-scenes interview, Tom Hanks (who plays many of the characters in the film, including grown-up Hero Boy), refers to him as ‘Chris’, most likely after the author of the book, Chris Van Allsburg. Several art books written about The Polar Express also refer to Hero Boy as Chris, most likely for the same reason.

I kind of like the idea of not naming his character, though. By keeping him nameless, we can more easily associate with him. His story could be ours. His name could be ours. We could be the ones going on a magical journey to the North Pole and meeting Santa Claus.