Although we are never told the original words that Captain Mitchell mispronounced, they were almost assuredly "nostro uomo," the Italian for "our man." Certainly, Mitchell refers to Nostromo often enough as "that fellow of mine" or some other variant of the possessive for nostro uomo to be plausible. The origin of Nostromo's name is highly significant on many levels. Allegorically, it reinforces the theme in which Nostromo represents the People, the common man whose very being has been owned by the rulers, in one form or another, throughout history. The act of Mitchell imposing a name on Nostromo is also significant in a novel where speech plays such an overtly political role, and for a character whose other name is "Gian' Battista," or John the Baptist (baptism being, of course, the ceremony of naming). In all ways Nostromo is the named -- the exploited, the appropriated, the narratee of history. It is not until late in Part Three, after he has rejected his exploitation, that we finally learn what his true name is.

On another level, of course, Nostromo is also the title of the book, and here the original "our man" takes on wider dimensions, connoting not just the class of common workers but Mankind in its entirety. It is a fitting hidden title for a novel whose narrative hides so much, while addressing nothing less than the whole human condition.

The mispronunciation also continues the pattern in which every character who attempts to quote something gets it slightly wrong. This subtle and humorous thread conveys the novel's theme of subjectivity, in which mankind lives hopelessly isolated each in his own private world, incapable of grasping any external fact without filtering it through error-prone interpretation. See Captain Mitchell, author of the mispronunication, claiming in his first line that "We never make mistakes." Nostromo has not just been named; he has been erroneously named, and if the title of Conrad's novel sets it forth as a mirror of the human condition, it also contains within it the all-important crack.