A friend of mine is a prolific novelist and journalist and has a regular column in the New York Times. He receives hundreds of emails from fans and detractors, and they range from excessive praise to outright hatred. He forwards me the funniest or weirdest, and he always writes “I get these every day.” I can’t imagine this, as I’m a private person and want a distinct separation between my work and my life—one reason why I use a pen name when I write.
Pen names have been used throughout history to hide political affiliations, mask gender, or to keep a low profile from an overbearing public. But how do authors choose what their name will be? Occasionally practical and oftentimes fabricated, the stories behind pen names are sometimes just as interesting as the authors themselves.
Green Eggs and Ham
Dr. Seuss’s legal name was Theodor Seuss Geisel. He also wrote under the names Rosetta Stone and Theodor LeSeieg (Geisel spelled backwards). Apparently this started when he was fired as the editor of the Dartmouth paper for partying and wanted to keep writing for them.
Two Legends of Mark Twain
Samuel Clemens famously adopted the pen name Mark Twain, but reports vary on the actual cause. For years, I’ve read that men piloting boats in the Mississippi shouted, “By the mark, twain!” (which means “by the mark, twice”) to indicate that the river was twenty feet deep, enough for the boat to pass through. But a recent article in the San Francisco Chronicle told the story of Clemens bellying up to a San Francisco bar and ordering two snorts in a row (of what is unclear), to which the bartender would note “Mark, twain” to his assistant, so they could run a tab on Clemens. I prefer the first story, if only because I’d rather picture Clemens on a boat in the Mississippi than bellied up to a bar like so many other writers.
Hilda the Imagiste
Hilda Doolittle, a famous poet and writer, went by the name H.D. Imagiste. The first two initials are obvious, but the last name comes for the type of poetry she wrote—imagism. In 1912, she met with Ezra Pound, who admired her poetry and made up the H.D. Imagiste signature, which lasted for most of her writing career.
Orwellian Front
George Orwell, whose legal name was Eric Blair, chose this name because George is the patron saint of England and was king at the time. Orwell is a river in Suffolk, one of Blair’s favorite sites. This is an especially well-chosen name, in my opinion, because Orwell always conjures the word “oracle.”
Latin Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll is another great pen name, of Charles Dodgson. He created this name by translating his first two names into the Latin “Carolus Lodovicus” and then anglicizing it into “Lewis Carroll.”
Maintaining Brand
Agatha Christie wrote romance novels under the name Mary Westmacott, apparently to maintain her privacy was well as to preserve her brand as a mystery and crime writer.
Similarly, Esther Pauline Friedman Lederer became Ann Landers after adopting the syndicated column in 1955. She eventually owned the copyright to the name.
More recently, David Handler uses the pseudonym and character Lemony Snicket for his children’s books and writings. Handler has appeared on TV as Snicket’s representative.
Very Punny
At least two authors have used the pseudonym Sue Denim (a play on the word pseudonym): Dav Pilkey, who wrote the Captain Underpants children’s series and Lewis Shiner, a science fiction writer.
It seems like there are endless reasons and sources of pen names, both practical and creative. Some writers simply don’t like the sound of their name; some create digital aliases to avoid junk mail, and some because their given name is too similar to someone else’s in the same field. But I think the writer O. Henry (real name: William Sydney Porter) supplies us with one of the best reasons: he was serving time in federal prison for embezzlement and was afraid a magazine wouldn’t publish material written by a convict, so he choose a new name from the newspaper. Pen name to the rescue!
