Jacques Austerlitz, alias Dafydd Elias, is the titular protagonist. His last name—because it shares its first and last three letters with Auschwitz, the infamous concentration camp—suggests the Holocaust as the cause of his defining torment. His name also has French resonances: His Francophile parents gave him the name Jacques despite it being an unusual Czech name, and his uncommon last name refers also to the famous battle in which Napoleon defeated the Russian and Austrian armies. Upon first learning his real name, Austerlitz is confused: The word sounds like a password, not a name. This confusion gives way to feeling rootless when the headmaster fails to explain anything about the mysterious origin indicated by his new name.

This sense of rootlessness plagues Austerlitz for much of his life; he feels utterly alone in the world, without a family or people. Raised from the age of four in Bala by Emyr and Gwendolyn Elias, he senses some terrible change has thrust him into his cold, new world, but he is too young to understand what has happened. Since both his adoptive parents and his school decline to explain his history to him, he lives most of his life tormented by his tragic forgotten past.