Pseudonym

<p>The term is derived from the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_language" title="Greek language">Greek</a> ψευδώνυμον (<i>pseudṓnymon</i>), literally "false name", from ψεῦδος (<i>pseûdos</i>), "lie, falsehood"<sup id="cite_ref-3" class="reference"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudonym#cite_note-3">[3]</a></sup> and ὄνομα (<i>ónoma</i>), "name".<sup id="cite_ref-4" class="reference"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudonym#cite_note-4">[4]</a></sup> A pseudonym is distinct from an <i>allonym</i>, which is the (real) name of another person, assumed by the author of a work of art. This may occur when someone is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghostwriting" class="mw-redirect" title="Ghostwriting">ghostwriting</a> a book or play, or in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parody" title="Parody">parody</a>, or when using a "front" name, such as by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenwriter" title="Screenwriter">screenwriters</a> <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood_blacklist" title="Hollywood blacklist">blacklisted</a> in <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollywood" title="Hollywood">Hollywood</a> in the 1950s and 1960s. See also <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudepigraph" class="mw-redirect" title="Pseudepigraph">pseudepigraph</a>, for <i>falsely</i> attributed authorship.</p>

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<h3>Concealing identity</h3>

<h4>Business</h4>

<p>Businesspersons of ethnic minorities in some parts of the world are sometimes advised by an employer to use a pseudonym that is common or acceptable in that area when conducting business, to overcome <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_bias" class="mw-redirect" title="Racial bias">racial</a> or religious <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias#Prejudices" title="Bias">bias</a>.<sup id="cite_ref-5" class="reference"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudonym#cite_note-5">[5]</a></sup></p>

<h4>Criminal activity</h4>

<p>Criminals may use aliases, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fictitious_business_names" class="mw-redirect" title="Fictitious business names">fictitious business names</a>, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dummy_corporations" class="mw-redirect" title="Dummy corporations">dummy corporations</a> (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_shells" class="mw-redirect" title="Corporate shells">corporate shells</a>) to hide their identity, or to impersonate other persons or entities in order to commit fraud. Aliases and fictitious business names used for dummy corporations may become so complex that, in the words of the <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washington_Post" class="mw-redirect" title="Washington Post">Washington Post</a></i>, "getting to the truth requires a walk down a bizarre labyrinth" and multiple government agencies may become involved to uncover the truth.<sup id="cite_ref-RTR_6-0" class="reference"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudonym#cite_note-RTR-6">[6]</a></sup></p>

<h4>Literature</h4>

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<div class="thumbcaption">A young <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Sand" title="George Sand">George Sand</a> (real name "Amantine Lucile Dupin")</div>

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<p>A <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pen_name" title="Pen name">pen name</a>, or <i>"nom de plume"</i> (French for "pen name"), is a pseudonym (sometimes a particular form of the real name) adopted by an <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Author" title="Author">author</a> (or on the author's behalf by their publishers).

Some female authors used male pen names, in particular in the 19th century, when writing was a male-dominated profession. The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bront%C3%AB_family" title="Brontë family">Brontë family</a> used pen names for their early work, so as not to reveal their gender (see below) and so that local residents would not know that the books related to people of the neighbourhood. The Brontës used their neighbours as inspiration for characters in many of their books. Anne Brontë published <i>The Tenant of Wildfell Hall</i> under the name Acton Bell. Charlotte Brontë published <i>Shirley</i> and <i>Jane Eyre</i> under the name Currer Bell. Emily Brontë published <i>Wuthering Heights</i> as Ellis Bell. A well-known example of the former is Mary Ann Evans, who wrote as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Eliot" title="George Eliot">George Eliot</a>. Another example is Amandine Aurore Lucile Dupin, a 19th-century French writer who used the pen name <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Sand" title="George Sand">George Sand</a>.

In contrast, some twentieth and twenty first century male romance novelists have used female pen names.<sup id="cite_ref-maleauthors_7-0" class="reference"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudonym#cite_note-maleauthors-7">[7]</a></sup> A few examples of male authors using female pseudonyms include Brindle Chase, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_O%27Donnell" title="Peter O'Donnell">Peter O'Donnell</a> (wrote as Madeline Brent) and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Wood_%28writer%29" title="Christopher Wood (writer)">Christopher Wood</a> (wrote as Penny Sutton and Rosie Dixon).<sup id="cite_ref-maleauthors_7-1" class="reference"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudonym#cite_note-maleauthors-7">[7]</a></sup>

A pen name may be used if a writer's real name is likely to be confused with the name of another writer or notable individual, or if their real name is deemed to be unsuitable. Authors who write both fiction and non-fiction, or in different <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genres" class="mw-redirect" title="Genres">genres</a>, may use different pen names to avoid confusing their readers.

In some cases, an author may become better known by his pen name than his real name. One famous example of this is Samuel Clemens' writing under the pen name <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Twain" title="Mark Twain">Mark Twain</a>. British <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematician" title="Mathematician">mathematician</a> Charles Dodgson, who wrote fantasy novels under the pen name <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_Carroll" title="Lewis Carroll">Lewis Carroll</a> and mathematical treatises under his own name, refused to open letters addressed to him as "Lewis Carroll".

Some authors, such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Robbins" title="Harold Robbins">Harold Robbins</a>, use several literary pseudonyms.<sup id="cite_ref-8" class="reference"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudonym#cite_note-8">[8]</a></sup>

Some pen names are not strictly pseudonyms, as they are simply variants of the authors' actual names. The authors <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C.L.Moore" title="C. L. Moore">C. L. Moore</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.E.Hinton" title="S. E. Hinton">S. E. Hinton</a> were female authors who used the initialised forms of their full names. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C.L.Moore" title="C. L. Moore">C. L. Moore</a> was Catherine Lucille Moore, who wrote in the 1930s male-dominated science fiction genre, and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S.E.Hinton" title="S. E. Hinton">S. E. Hinton</a>, (author of <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Outsiders%28novel%29" title="The Outsiders (novel)">The Outsiders</a></i>) is Susan Eloise Hinton. <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Trek" title="Star Trek">Star Trek</a></i> writer <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D.C.Fontana" title="D. C. Fontana">D. C. Fontana</a> (Dorothy Catherine) wrote using her abbreviated own name and also under the pen names Michael Richards and J. Michael Bingham. Author <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V.C.Andrews" class="mw-redirect" title="V.C. Andrews">V.C. Andrews</a> intended to publish under her given name of Virginia Andrews, but was told that, due to a production error, her first novel was being released under the name of "V.C. Andrews"; later she learned that her publisher had in fact done this deliberately. Joanne Kathleen Rowling<sup id="cite_ref-9" class="reference"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudonym#cite_note-9">[9]</a></sup> published the <i><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Potter" title="Harry Potter">Harry Potter</a></i> series under the shortened name <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J.K.Rowling" title="J. K. Rowling">J. K. Rowling</a>. Rowling also published the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cormoran_Strike" title="Cormoran Strike">Cormoran Strike</a> series, a series of detective novels including, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cuckoo%27s_Calling" title="The Cuckoo's Calling">The Cuckoo's Calling</a> under the pseudonym "Robert Galbraith".

<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill" title="Winston Churchill">Winston Churchill</a> wrote under the pen name <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill_as_writer" title="Winston Churchill as writer">Winston S. Churchill</a> (from his full surname "Spencer-Churchill" which he did not otherwise use) in an attempt to avoid confusion with the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winston_Churchill_%28novelist%29" title="Winston Churchill (novelist)">American novelist of the same name</a>. In this case, the attempt was not entirely successful – and the two are still sometimes confused by booksellers.<sup id="cite_ref-10" class="reference"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudonym#cite_note-10">[10]</a></sup><sup id="cite_ref-11" class="reference"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudonym#cite_note-11">[11]</a></sup>

A pen name may be used specifically to hide the identity of the author, as in the case of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expos%C3%A9%28journalism%29" class="mw-redirect" title="Exposé (journalism)">exposé</a> books about <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espionage" title="Espionage">espionage</a> or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime" title="Crime">crime</a>, or explicit erotic fiction. Some prolific authors adopt a pseudonym to disguise the extent of their published output, e.g. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_King" title="Stephen King">Stephen King</a> writing as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Bachman" title="Richard Bachman">Richard Bachman</a>. Co-authors may choose to publish under a collective pseudonym, e.g., <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P.J._Tracy" title="P. J. Tracy">P. J. Tracy</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perri_O%27Shaughnessy" title="Perri O'Shaughnessy">Perri O'Shaughnessy</a>. <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederic_Dannay" class="mw-redirect" title="Frederic Dannay">Frederic Dannay</a> and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manfred_Lee" class="mw-redirect" title="Manfred Lee">Manfred Lee</a> used the name <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellery_Queen" title="Ellery Queen">Ellery Queen</a> as both a pen name for their collaborative works and as the name of their main character.

A famous case in French literature was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romain_Gary" title="Romain Gary">Romain Gary</a>. Already a well-known and highly acclaimed writer, he started publishing books under the pen name <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89mile_Ajar" class="mw-redirect" title="Émile Ajar">Émile Ajar</a>. He wanted to test whether his new books would be well received on their own merits and without the aid of his established reputation, and they were: Émile Ajar, like Romain Gary before him, was awarded the prestigious <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prix_Goncourt" title="Prix Goncourt">Prix Goncourt</a> by a jury unaware that both were the same person. Similarly, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronnie_Barker" title="Ronnie Barker">Ronnie Barker</a> submitted comedy material under the name of Gerald Wiley.

A collective pseudonym may represent an entire publishing house, or any contributor to a long-running series, especially with juvenile literature. Examples include <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watty_Piper" class="mw-redirect" title="Watty Piper">Watty Piper</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Appleton" title="Victor Appleton">Victor Appleton</a>, <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erin_Hunter" title="Erin Hunter">Erin Hunter</a>, and Kamiru M. Xhan.

Another use of a pseudonym in literature is to present a story as being written by the fictional characters in the story. The series of novels known as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Series_Of_Unfortunate_Events" class="mw-redirect" title="A Series Of Unfortunate Events">A Series Of Unfortunate Events</a> are written by <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Handler" title="Daniel Handler">Daniel Handler</a> under the pen name of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lemony_Snicket" title="Lemony Snicket">Lemony Snicket</a>, a character in the series.

An <b>anonymity pseudonym</b> or <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple-use_name" title="Multiple-use name">multiple-use name</a> is a name used by many different people to protect anonymity.<sup id="cite_ref-Home_12-0" class="reference"><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pseudonym#cite_note-Home-12">[12]</a></sup> It is a strategy that has been adopted by many unconnected radical groups and by cultural groups, where the construct of personal identity has been criticised. This has led to the idea of the "open pop star".</p>

Pseudonym

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