The present study proposes a comparatist approach of the correspondence between proper names in Romanian and French, from anonymous designations to proper names. The identity of the designated entities is vague or even hidden in Romanian whereas the author, Paul Miclau, reintroduces the proper names of persons and places in French, whose reference is quite clear, thus enabling the French readers to identify them in the text. The text under discussion is Roumains déracinés, an autobiographic story symbolizing for its author, Paul Miclau, a return in search of the double identity of the writer as a witness and as a character, based upon the axis of referential, linguistic or even dialectal authenticity. We intend to delineate the complexity of the narrative identity in relation to the three versions of the same story. The absence of proper names was not intended by the author, it being entirely spontaneous. We will foreground the mechanisms by means of which their translation is realized, taking into account the fact that the absence of proper names in the Romanian version is a consequence of the story being located ”outside of space and time.”