Pseudonym


A pseudonym or alias is a fictitious name that a person assumes for a particular purpose, which differs from their original or true name. This also differs from a new name that entirely or legally replaces an individual's own. Many pseudonym holders use them because they wish to remain anonymous and maintain privacy, though this may be difficult to achieve as a result of legal issues.

Scope

Pseudonyms include stage names, user names, ring names, pen names, aliases, superhero or villain identities and code names, gamertags, and regnal names of emperors, popes, and other monarchs. In some cases, it may also include nicknames. Historically, they have sometimes taken the form of anagrams, Graecisms, and Latinisations.
Pseudonyms are different from new names that replace old ones. Pseudonyms are "part-time" names, used only in certain contexts: to provide a more clear-cut separation between one's private and professional lives, to showcase or enhance a particular persona, or to hide an individual's real identity, as with writers' pen names, graffiti artists' tags, resistance fighters' or terrorists' noms de guerre, computer hackers' handles, and other online identities for services such as social media, online gaming, and internet forums. Actors, musicians, and other performers sometimes use stage names for a degree of privacy, to better market themselves, and other reasons.
Some pseudonyms are part of a cultural or organisational tradition; for example, devotional names are used by members of some religious institutes, and "cadre names" are used by Communist party leaders such as Trotsky and Lenin.

Collective pseudonyms

A collective name or collective pseudonym is one shared by two or more persons, for example, the co-authors of a work, such as Carolyn Keene, Erin Hunter, Ellery Queen, Nicolas Bourbaki, or James S. A. Corey.
Publius was a collective pseudonym used by James Madison, Alexander Hamilton and John Jay in writing The Federalist Papers. The individual authorship of some of the papers is still debated.

Etymology

Pseudonym comes from the Greek ψευδώνυμον pseudṓnymon 'false name', from ψεῦδος pseûdos 'lie, falsehood' and ὄνομα 'name'. Alias is a Latin adverb meaning "at another time, elsewhere".

Usage

Name change

Sometimes people change their names in such a manner that the new name becomes permanent and is used by all who know the person. This is not an alias or pseudonym, but in fact a new name. In many countries, including common law countries, a name change can be ratified by a court and become a person's new legal name.

Concealing identity

Pseudonymous authors may still have their various identities linked together through stylometric analysis of their writing style. The precise degree of this unmasking ability and its ultimate potential is uncertain, but the privacy risks are expected to grow with improved analytic techniques and text corpora. Authors may practice adversarial stylometry to resist such identification.

Business

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 racial or religious bias.

Criminal activity

Criminals may use aliases, fictitious business names, and dummy corporations 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 Washington Post, "getting to the truth requires a walk down a bizarre labyrinth" and multiple government agencies may become involved to uncover the truth. Giving a false name to a law enforcement officer is a crime in many jurisdictions.

Literature

A pen name is a pseudonym adopted by an author. English usage also includes the French-language phrase nom de plume.
The concept of pseudonymity has a long history. In ancient literature it was common to write in the name of a famous person, not for concealment or with any intention of deceit; in the New Testament, the second letter of Peter is probably such. A more modern example is all of The Federalist Papers, which were signed by Publius, a pseudonym representing the trio of James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay. The papers were written partially in response to several Anti-Federalist Papers, also written under pseudonyms. As a result of this pseudonymity, historians know that the papers were written by Madison, Hamilton, and Jay, but have not been able to discern with certainty which of the three authored a few of the papers. There are also examples of modern politicians and high-ranking bureaucrats writing under pseudonyms.
Some female authors have used male pen names, in particular in the 19th century, when writing was a highly male-dominated profession. The Brontë sisters used pen names for their early work, so as not to reveal their gender and so that local residents would not suspect that the books related to people of their neighbourhood. Anne Brontë's The Tenant of Wildfell Hall was published under the name Acton Bell, while Charlotte Brontë used the name Currer Bell for Jane Eyre and Shirley, and Emily Brontë adopted Ellis Bell as cover for Wuthering Heights. Other examples from the nineteenth-century are novelist Mary Ann Evans and French writer Amandine Aurore Lucile Dupin. Pseudonyms may also be used due to cultural or organization or political prejudices.
Similarly, some 20th- and 21st-century male romance novelists – a field dominated by women – have used female pen names. A few examples are Brindle Chase, Peter O'Donnell, Christopher Wood, and Hugh C. Rae.
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 the real name is deemed unsuitable.
Authors who write both fiction and non-fiction, or in different genres, may use different pen names to avoid confusing their readers. For example, the romance writer Nora Roberts writes mystery novels under the name J. D. Robb.
In some cases, an author may become better known by their pen name, rather than their real name. Some famous examples of that include Samuel Clemens, writing as Mark Twain, Theodor Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, and Eric Arthur Blair. The British mathematician Charles Dodgson wrote fantasy novels as Lewis Carroll and mathematical treatises under his own name.
Some authors, such as Harold Robbins, use several literary pseudonyms.
Some pen names have been used for long periods, even decades, without the author's true identity being discovered, as with Elena Ferrante and Torsten Krol.
Joanne Rowling published the Harry Potter series as J. K. Rowling. Rowling also published the Cormoran Strike series of detective novels including The Cuckoo's Calling under the pseudonym Robert Galbraith.
Winston Churchill wrote as Winston S. Churchill in an attempt to avoid confusion with an American novelist of the same name. The attempt was not wholly successful – the two are still sometimes confused by booksellers.
A pen name may be used specifically to hide the identity of the author, as with exposé books about espionage or crime, or explicit erotic fiction. Erwin von Busse used a pseudonym when he published short stories about sexually charged encounters between men in Germany in 1920. Some prolific authors adopt a pseudonym to disguise the extent of their published output, e. g. Stephen King writing as Richard Bachman. Co-authors may choose to publish under a collective pseudonym, e. g., P. J. Tracy and Perri O'Shaughnessy. Frederic Dannay and Manfred Lee used the name Ellery Queen as a pen name for their collaborative works and as the name of their main character. Asa Earl Carter, a Southern white segregationist affiliated with the KKK, wrote Western books under a fictional Cherokee persona to imply legitimacy and conceal his history.
A famous case in French literature was Romain Gary. Already a well-known writer, he started publishing books as Émile Ajar to test whether his new books would be well received on their own merits, without the aid of his established reputation. They were: Émile Ajar, like Romain Gary before him, was awarded the prestigious Prix Goncourt by a jury unaware that they were the same person. Similarly, TV actor Ronnie Barker submitted comedy material under the name 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 Watty Piper, Victor Appleton, Erin Hunter, 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 Series of Unfortunate Events are written by Daniel Handler under the pen name of Lemony Snicket, a character in the series. This applies also to some of the several 18th-century English and American writers who used the name Fidelia.
An anonymity pseudonym or multiple-use name is a name used by many different people to protect anonymity. 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", such as Monty Cantsin.

Medicine

Pseudonyms and acronyms are often employed in medical research to protect subjects' identities through a process known as de-identification.

Science

put forward his theory of heliocentrism in the manuscript Commentariolus anonymously, in part because of his employment as a law clerk for a church-government organization.
Sophie Germain and William Sealy Gosset used pseudonyms to publish their work in the field of mathematics – Germain, to avoid rampant 19th century academic misogyny, and Gosset, to avoid revealing brewing practices of his employer, the Guinness Brewery.
Satoshi Nakamoto is a pseudonym of a still unknown author or authors' group behind a white paper about bitcoin.