Proper nouns can be used as characterizing devices in literary texts and so become a meaningful element in the texture of such works. Names can in this way be endowed with an extra semantic load that makes them border on wordplay. The presence of meaningful literary names is likely to cause problems during translation, the question being not only whether the transposition in the target language is technically possible, but also to what extent this would be viewed as an appropriate procedure. This paper explores the issue by analyzing a corpus of texts: twentieth-century Italian translations of English Restoration comedies and Italian translations of Dickens ‘s novels. There are occasional references to other English literary texts from the medieval and Renaissance periods as well. Technical problems of translating proper nouns are taken into consideration, along with other factors, such as genre, intended audience, cultural tradition and general norms of translation.