Sigla

The casual reader of Finnegans Wake could be forgiven for believing that the novel has a cast of thousands, with at least as many characters as War and Peace or À la recherche du temps perdu – the definitive guide to the book’s dramatis personae, Adaline Glasheen’s exhaustive Third Census of Finnegans Wake, has indeed entries for thousands of characters. But the truth of the matter is that Joyce’s work is populated by just a handful of distinct characters, who, however, appear and reappear throughout the book in various guises. They are like the members of a small troupe of actors who are forced to “double up” their roles in order to stage a particularly complex play – though Finnegans Wake is so complex that most of our actors are compelled to play hundreds of different parts throughout the course of the work's 628 pages. The book’s protagonist HCE, for example, is in turn (and sometimes simultaneously) Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, Charles Stewart Parnell, the Duke of Wellington, Julius Caesar, Finn MacCool, King Mark of Cornwall, the Salmon of Knowledge, etc. And this list could be extended ad nauseam if minor characters were included to which only one or two allusions are made throughout the book (e.g. Old Parr, with whom HCE is briefly identified on page 3).

To help keep track of his characters and the various guises that they adopt, Joyce devised a system of sigla (Singular: siglum, a diminutive of the Latin word signum, which means “sign” or “mark”) whereby his main characters – and a few important “leitmotifs” – could be represented by small icons or symbols. Although originally introduced as an aide-mémoire to help Joyce make sense of his often chaotic notes and early drafts, several of these sigla were later incorporated in the book itself.

Some of these characters are also encoded in certain combinations of letters. The male protagonist, for example, is often alluded to by the letters HCE (in various permutations); the female protagonist by the letters ALP; their daughter, Issy, is sometimes represented by a pair of dotted i's (-ii-), no doubt a pun on her "eyes", the two dots being a visual representation.

The principal characters and leitmotifs, and their respective sigla, are as follows:

Siglum	Name	Principal Roles	Guises	Initialisms	Origin
File:HCE.PNG	HCE	Male protagonist Father Husband	Tim Finnegan Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker Adam Finn MacCool Wellington	H-C-E	Inn Landlord
File:ALP.png	ALP	Female protagonist Mother Wife	Anna Livia Plurabelle River Liffey Eve	A-L-P	Inn Landlady
File:Shem.png	Shem	Evil twin	Shem James Joyce Esau		Son
File:Shaun.png	Shaun	Good twin	Shaun Stanislaus Joyce Jacob		Son
File:Izzy.png	Issy	Daughter Temptress Split Personality	Issy Isolde	-ii-	Daughter
File:Shem-Shaun.PNG	Shem-Shaun	Oedipal figure HCE's rival	Tristan Diarmuid Naoise St Patrick
S	Jo	Man Servant Indigene	Sackerson Sigurd Mahan Behan		Flea on quilt
K	Kate	Cleaning Lady Poor Old Woman Grandmother	Countess Cathleen Cathleen Ni Houlihan Katherine Strong Kate the Shrew		Inn Slavey
File:MMLJ.png	Four Old Men The Four	Four Judges The Four Masters The Four Evangelists	Matthew Gregory Mark Lyons Luke Tarpey Johnny MacDougal		Bedposts
File:CIRCLE.PNG	Sullivans & Doyles	12 Jurymen 12 Tables of Law 12 Months 12 Zodiacal Signs	Sullivans Doyles		Watch dial
File:Ellipse.PNG	The Twenty-Eight	Flower Maidens Heliotrope Rainbow	St Bride's Schoolgirls
File:Book.PNG	Square	Finnegans Wake	HCE's Coffin ALP's Letter FW		Flagpatch quilt
File:Mandala.PNG	Mandala	Viconian Cycle	Four Seasons

In addition to these, Joyce devised a few other sigla, which, however, are redundant. When he first introduced the character of Tristan he gave him his own siglum, T. But the Tristan character is simply an “avatar” of Shem-Shaun, so he does not require his own separate siglum. Another defunct siglum, P, represents “a parish priest...”; but the priest is none other than Shaun, so once again no separate siglum is required.