His name was Akakiy Akakievitch.

It may strike the reader as rather singular and far-fetched, but he may rest assured that it was by no means far-fetched, and that the circumstances were such that it would have been impossible to give him any other.
This is how it came about.
Akakiy Akakievitch was born, if my memory fails me not, in the evening of the 23rd of March.

His mother, the wife of a Government official and a very fine woman, made all due arrangements for having the child baptised.

She was lying on the bed opposite the door; on her right stood the godfather, Ivan Ivanovitch Eroshkin, a most estimable man, who served as presiding officer of the senate, while the godmother, Anna Semenovna Byelobrushkova, the wife of an officer of the quarter, and a woman of rare virtues.

They offered the mother her choice of three names, Mokiya, Sossiya, or that the child should be called after the martyr Khozdazat.