As I read the first chapter of The Crying of Lot 49, I - as everyone else, I'm sure - was taken aback by the crazy names in the novel. Oedipa? Mucho? Pierce Inverarity? Dr. Hilarius? None of them seem to be something parents would want to name their kid. That makes me think there must be a specific reason why Pynchon chose each one.

Perhaps they represent a character trait for each person. However, because it is so early in the story, I can only make a guess as to what the names mean.

"Oedipa" sounds very much like the female form of the name "Oedipus" - the subject of the Theban Cycle, a series of three plays by the Greek dramatist Sophocles. According to J. Kerry Grant's "A companion to The Crying of Lot 49," "The general pattern of Oedipus's and Oedipa's lives is identical: during their investigations, both characters move away from absolute positivism to relative indeterminacy; the 'crime' that both find so appalling is that they were so self-absorbed that they never saw the danger of the former position."

"Maas" sounds like a corrupted form of "mass"--something that resists change. Perhaps then, Oedipa is at once an active detective who also is sluggish and reluctant.

"Pierce Inverarity" sounds like "piercing variety" or "peers in variety," an identification that could be supported by Pierce's use of many different voices and vast array of dissimilar land-holdings.