Names and Naming in Young Adult Literature - Scarecrow Press

Names for Fun 17
While Sachar’s 2006 sequel, Small Steps, is not the tour de force that
Holes is, for someone studying names it is almost as interesting because
nearly half of the characters create new names for themselves. The
story is set in Austin, Texas, where Kaira DeLeon, formerly known as
Kathy Spears, is a popular young singer coming to town for a big concert.
Armpit, from Camp Green Lake, is the protagonist; he has gone
from digging holes at Camp Green Lake to digging holes for the Raincreek
Irrigation and Landscaping Company while also going to summer
school. The book opens with his digging a trench along the side yard of
a house belonging to a woman named Cherry Lane, who happens to be
the mayor of Austin.
X-Ray is the other returning character from Camp Green Lake. He
is so proud of his nickname that he has it on his vanity license plate, a
disadvantage when the police come looking to question someone
named X-Ray for selling counterfeit tickets to a rock concert. X-Ray
meets his clients in the parking lot of the H-E-B supermarket, which
readers learn is named after the founder, Howard E. Butt, who rightly
figures that few people will buy their groceries at a store called Butt’s.
Armpit is having a hard time getting away from his nickname,
which people assume means that “out of all those nasty, sweaty guys [at
Camp Green Lake], he smelled the worst!” (89). When Armpit makes
arrangements to take Tatiana, a girl who makes his knees weak, to
Kaira DeLeon’s concert, her friends say such things as “He’ll probably
put his big, fat, sweaty arm around you.” She changes her mind so that
at the last minute, Armpit invites Ginny, a ten-year-old neighbor girl
with cerebral palsy to go with him.
Through some pretty unlikely circumstances, Armpit and Ginny
end up watching the show from backstage and, after the show, having
ice cream with Kaira in her dressing room. Ginny whispers to Kaira
that Armpit’s name comes from some part of his body, and so Kaira
teases him by calling him Knuckles, Elbow, Muscles, Toenail, Hands,
and Fingers. Ginny promises that it isn’t anyplace “nasty,” and so
Armpit finally tells Kaira his name when she agrees that she will touch
whatever it is. This turns out to be a kind of intimate little pleasure.
A funnier part is when Kaira is singing one of her songs and from
backstage Armpit mishears it and thinks she is singing his name instead
of “I’m but . . .” in,