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It has always been my assumption that the use of the names of Punch and Judy is meant to conjure up the primary elements of that venerable puppet show in which Punch the anarchic source of misbehavior who, though severely punished by his wife Judy, ultimately triumphs. In Kipling's story, the slapstick humor and mischief-making of the puppet show is turned dark by the realism of the boy's suffering at the hands of his foster mother. The effect of these names, long associated with the pleasures of the carnival and street fair, turn sinister in this context while retaining through that association a kind of connection to the point-of-view of an imaginative little boy. Miriam Bailin