What is the significance of the few proper names given in the story?Sonny's Blues by James Baldwin

A story with a universality of theme, James Baldwin's
"Sonny's Blues" brings to light two sides of the African-American experience, the black
who has assimilated into white society and the black who remains an outsider.  For both,
there are limitations; thus, the central theme is suffering, a major trope of the
African-American experience.

Because of this universality
of theme, Baldwin feels no need to give some of his minor characters names since they
are a part of Sonny and his brother's suffering and desires.  And, with its Biblical
implications, the character Sonny--the son of man--is the representative for suffering. 
Moreover, after Sonny's brother experiences the death of his little girl, he
communicates with Sonny because now his own suffering has made Sonny's
real.

United in suffering, Sonny and his brother watch the
street where "every face looks darkening."  One day there is a street revival carried on
by "three sisters in black, and a brother."  As the narrator watches, he describes how
each woman address the others as "Sister," and in the

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the music seemed to soothe a poison out
of....[their] belligerent, battered faces, as though they were fleeing back to their
first condition, while dreaming of their
last.

Sonny tells his brother
of the woman who sings,

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"...it struck me all of a sudden how much
suffering she must have had to go through--to sing like that.  It's repulsive to think
you have to suffer that
much."

He also tells his
brother that there is inside him a storm.  When he
finally

gets
with it and plays it, you realize nobody's listening.  So
you've got to listen.  You got to find a way to
listen.

Inviting his brother
to come to the ngihtclub where he has been invited to play, the two man walk down a dark
street in downton Harlem. As they enter, a voice and "an enormous black man "erupted out
of all the atmospheric lighting, piacing an arm around Sonny's shoulder.  As the
musicians begin to play, the amosphere on the stage and the room begins to "change and
tighten."  The narrator notes that most people hear only "private, vanishing
evocations," but those who create the music hear something else as they
are

dealing
with the roar rising from the void and imposing order on it as it hits the air.  What is
evoked in him, then, is of another order, more terrible because it has no words, and
triumphant, too, for that same reason.  And his triumph, when he triumphs, is
ours....

Then they all came together again, and Sonny was
part of the family again.  I could tell from his
face....

Freedom lurked around us and I understood, at
last, that he could help us to be free if we would listen, that he would never be free
until we did.

In their
universality of suffering, all the people can be free through Sonny's music, Sonny's
blues.  Sonny's brother states that for him the drink the waitress brings Sonny glows
and shakes above his head "like the very cup of trembling."  He is in communion with
Sonny; he feels his experience, and out of this shared experience, meaning emerges.
Because the narrator is united to Sonny who is, in turn, united to others, the blues
carry a message, not only of suffering, but of understanding the suffering of the
African American.  No proper names are needed for this wonderful unity
.