What's your name,' Coraline asked the cat. 'Look, I'm Coraline. Okay?' 'Cats don't have names,' it said. 'No?' said Coraline. 'No,' said the cat. 'Now you people have names. That's because you don't know who you are. We know who we are, so we don't need names.

This exchange occurs early in Neil Gaiman’s children’s novella *Coraline* (2002), when Coraline—newly moved into the Pink Palace Apartments and exploring her unfamiliar surroundings—meets the mysterious black cat that can slip between the “real” world and the Other World. The cat functions as a liminal guide and commentator, offering cryptic, often unsettling wisdom as Coraline confronts the seductive but predatory “Other Mother.” The dialogue about names appears in the course of Coraline’s attempts to orient herself and categorize what she encounters, while the cat resists human habits of labeling and insists on a different kind of self-knowledge.

The cat’s claim that cats do not need names because they “know who [they] are” contrasts human identity as something socially constructed, negotiated, and therefore named. Coraline’s insistence on names reflects a desire for stability and control in a disorienting environment; naming is a way to make the strange familiar. The cat’s rebuke suggests that humans rely on external markers—names, roles, recognition—because the self can be uncertain or fragmented. In the novel’s broader themes, the line underscores Coraline’s coming-of-age task: to define herself through courage and choice rather than through the comforting labels offered by the Other World.