The title is the most important element of every book, it attracts the reader's attention and creates a first impression. The reader first pays attention to the title, so the title should be catchy, clearly convey the idea and content of the book. The purpose of the study is to identify and compare the characteristic features of book naming (titles) in classical and modern Russian literature. In the course of the work, the patterns of book naming, the opinions of famous scholars, and the classification of the titles of books of Russian classical literature were studied. The research method for classification was 84 titles of books from the classics. Further, to identify distinctive features, a classification of the titles of books of modern Russian literature was given. To confirm the idea 71 modern popular books were selected. The study uses the method of the situational analysis and the method of classification and generalization. The author comes to the main conclusion that classic writers approach book naming with special care, and modern authors use various experiments with book title techniques.