Pseudonyms: Rappers

I have written before about pseudonyms. The use of these "stage names" is a very common practice amongst music rappers.

Here are some of the better-known ones.

The origins are sometimes obvious, sometimes not obvious. For example, Eminem began rapping at age 14 with his friend Mike Ruby using the pseudonyms "Manix" for Ruby and "M&M" for Marshall Mathers III initials.  "M&M" evolved into "Eminem."

A less obvious origin is that of "50 Cent" adopted by Curtis James Jackson III. Jackson adopted the nickname "50 Cent" as a metaphor for change. The name was used earlier by Kelvin Martin, a 1980s Brooklyn robber known as "50 Cent." Jackson said he chose it "because it says everything I want it to say. I'm the same kind of person 50 Cent was. I provide for myself by any means."

Andre 3000 ............... Andre Benjamin
Busta Rhymes ............... Trevor Smith
Cee-Lo .................. Thomas Calloway
Common .............. Lonnie Rashid Lynn
DMX ...................... Earl Simmons
Foxy Brown ............... Inga Marchand
The Game .................. Jayceon Taylor
Ghostface Killah ............. Dennis Coles
Grandmaster Flash .......... Joseph Saddler
Ice Cube .................. O’Shea Jackson
Ice-T ....................... Tracy Morrow
Ja Rule ...................... Jeffrey Atkins
Jay-Z ...................... Shawn Carter
KRS-One .....................Kris Parker
Lil’ Kim ....................Kimberly Jones
LL Cool J ............... James Todd Smith
Ludacris ............... Christopher Bridges
Mos Def .................... Dante Smith
Notorious BIG ......... Christopher Wallace
Snoop Dogg ...............Calvin Broadus
T.I......................Clifford Harris Jr.

Pseudonyms: Fictional Superheroes

Pseudonyms are frequently used with fictional characters in films, on TV, in books and in comic books..

Clint Eastwood and Calvin Klein are names applied to fictional Marty McFly in Back To The Future .

As a Seinfeld fan, I know that Art Vandelay is a pseudonym used by George Costanza.

On TV's Breaking Bad, Heisenberg is the pseudonym taken by Walter White, and in the series prequel, Better Call Saul, Saul Goodman is the name taken by James "Jimmy" McGill.

On TV's long running series Doctor Who, the protagonist is known simply as The Doctor.

Do you remember The Shadow (Lamont Cranston) from the classic radio series?

TV Trivia: Who took the pseudonyms Regina Phalange and Ken Adams?  It was Phoebe Buffay and Joey Tribbiani on Friends.

Do you know Lord Voldemort's "real" name? Tom Marvolo Riddle is the character's name in the Harry Potter Series.

If you read the James Bond novels or watch the films, you might know that M is Sir Miles Messervy and Q is the code name for Major Boothroyd.

The Scarlet Pimpernel is actually the character Sir Percy Blakeney.

In The Three Musketeers we meet Athos (Armand de Sillègue d'Athos d'Autevielle, Le Comte de La Fère) and d'Artagnan (Charles de Batz-Castelmore), Porthos (Isaac de Porthau, Baron du Vallon de Bracieux de Pierrefonds) and Aramis (Henri d'Aramitz, le Chevalier d'Herblay).

Zorro is the name taken by Don Diego de la Vega.

Mr. Underhill is a name used by Frodo Baggins) in the Lord Of The Rings series.

         

Comic book characters, especially superheroes, almost always have pseudonyms.

1. The Hulk (Dr. Robert Bruce Banner) - Marvel Comics
2. Spider-Man (Peter Benjamin Parker) - Marvel Comics
3. Black Cat (Felicia Hardy) - Marvel Comics
4. Wolverine (Logan, James Howlett) - Marvel Comics
5. Captain America (Steven Grant "Steve" Rogers) - Marvel Comics
6. Superman (Kal-El / Clark Kent) - DC Comics
7. Wonder Woman (Princess Diana of Themyscira / Diana Prince) - DC comics
8. Batman (Bruce Wayne) - DC Comics
9. Catwoman (Selina Kyle) - DC Comics and as Patience Phillips in the 2004 film
10. Rorschach (Walter Joseph Kovacs) - Watchmen (Alan Moore graphic novel)
11. Doctor Octopus (Dr. Otto Gunther Octavius) - Marvel Comics
12. The Penguin (Oswald Chesterfield Cobblepot) - DC Comics
13. The Riddler (Dr. Edward Nigma) - DC Comics
14. Huntress (Helena Wayne) - DC Comics
15. Huntress (Helena Bertinelli) - DC Comics
16. Batgirl (Barbara Gordon) - DC Comics
17. Batgirl (Cassandra Cain) - DC Comics
18. The Flash (Jay Garrick) - DC Comics
19. The Flash (Barry Allen) - DC Comics
20. The Flash (Wally West) - DC Comics
21. The Flash (Bart Allen) - DC Comics

Pseudonyms: Sports

A number of athletes have chosen to use pseudonyms. These are not to be confused with nicknames. For example, Cal Ripken, Jr. was who played in 2,632 consecutive games, over 16 seasons without a game off, which earned him the nickname “Iron Man.”

But a pseudonym is a more formal, permanent and usually legal name change. Some sports pseudonyms include:

Joe Louis (Joseph Louis Barrow)
Chi Chi Rodriguez (Juan Antonio Rodriguez)
Chipper Jones (Larry Wayne Jones, Jr.)
Whitey Ford (Edward Charles Ford)
Babe Ruth (George Herman Ruth, Jr.)
Casey Stengel (Charles Dillon Stengel; originally named after the initials of his hometown of Kansas City, Missouri, or "K.C.")
Chad Ochocinco (Chad Javon Johnson)
Chi Chi Rodriguez (Juan Antonio Rodriguez)
Chipper Jones (Larry Wayne Jones, Jr.)
Cristiano Ronaldo (Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro)

A few interesting name change stories:



Yogi Berra ( born Lawrence Peter Berra) grew up in St. Louis and while playing in American Legion baseball, he received the nickname "Yogi" from his friend Jack Maguire. After seeing a newsreel about India, Jack said that Larry resembled a Hindu yogi whenever he sat around with arms and legs crossed waiting to bat or while looking sad after a losing game.

Another complicated - and confusing - sports name change is that of Abdul-Karim al-Jabbar, a former football running back. He played in the National Football League (NFL) from 1996 to 2000 with the Miami Dolphins, Cleveland Browns, and Indianapolis Colts. He was previously known as Karim Abdul-Jabbar and was born Sharmon Shah. In 1995, Sharmon Shah, a Muslim, was given the name "Karim Abdul-Jabbar" by his Imam.

In his NFL debut, some viewers and even some commentators mistakenly believed that he was the son of former basketball great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Both had attended UCLA.





Basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had played at UCLA under the name (Ferdinand) Lew(is) Alcindor. In 1968, Alcindor converted to Sunni Islam, but he did not begin publicly using his Arabic name until 1971.

Pseudonyms: Stage Names - Actors, Singers

We have written before about the use of pseudonyms by different groups. here are some "stage names" used by actors and directors.

Natalie

Natalie Portman is a dual Israeli and American citizen who used her grandmother’s maiden name as a surname rather than her birth name, Herschlag.

Demi Moore's real name is Demetria Guynes. She must be into pseudonyms because two of her exes used them too. Bruce Willis was born as Walter Willis and Ashton was born with the name Christopher Kutcher.

Albert Brooks chose that name although I doubt that any of us would confuse him with his real name twin: Albert Einstein.

Actress Meg Ryan went for shortening her real name of Margaret Mary Emily Anne Hyra.

Natalie Wood, probably under pressure from a film studio, Americanized her given name: Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko. Born to Russian immigration parents, the change was not unusual at the time. Another Hollywood namechanger was the Swedish Greta Lovisa Gustafsson, better known as Greta Garbo.

Woody Allen did a switch from his original Allen Konigsberg.

Comedian Louis C.K.'s real name is Louis Szekely which is really just just an easier way to say his actual last name, which is pronounced “See-kay.”

Joaquin Phoenix's real name is Joaquin Rafael Bottom.

Chevy Chase rejected his given name of Cornelius Crane Chase. Though I have read that the actor got his name from his grandmother who liked the traditional English song “The Ballad of Chevy Chase.” I always suspected that it had something to do with the city Chevy Chase in Maryland.

Rather than shorten her first name, Tina Fey shortened her middle name: Elizabeth Stamatina Fey. But she did get to name her 30 Rock character Liz.

Ben

Ben Kingsley, perhaps best known for playing Gandhi, was born, like Barack Obama, to a white mother and Kenyan father of Indian Muslim descent. His birth name is Krishna Pandit Bhanji.

Actress Olivia Wilde started with the name Olivia Jane Cockburn, but dropped that tough to deal with last name that suggest to the mean kids "penis."

Actor Alan Alda seems to have gone pretty far away from his given name of Alphonso d’Abruzzo, but he came up with that surname by putting together the first two letters of his first and last name. AL + DA.

Portia De Rossi had a rather simple name, Amanda Lee Rogers, and went the other way by making it sound more exotic.

Diane Keaton's real name is Diane Hall. She grabbed the last name from the famous silent movie comedian Buster Keaton and her then-boyfriend and director Woody Allen used her real last name for her eponymous character in Annie Hall.

Michael Caine was born with Maurice Micklewhite, but opted to use as his last name Humphrey Bogart’s character in The Caine Mutiny.

Larry King was born to an Austrian father and mother from Belarus, both of whom were Orthodox Jews who named their baby Lawrence Harvey Zeigler.

Whoopi Goldberg started as Caryn Johnson but on the advice of her mother who said to take a Jewish last name believing that it would help her comedy career if people thought she was Jewish. I'm not sure that explains the Whoopi part.

Wrestler and sometime actor Hulk Hogan chose not to use his not very threatening real name: Terry Jean Bollette.

1950s/60s actor heartthrob Rock Hudson had the un-hearthrobby name Leroy Harold Scherer, Jr.

In the golden days of the Hollywood studio system it was pretty standard to change actor's names.

Joan Crawford started as Lucille LeSueur.

Kirk Douglas wisely was renamed from Issur Danielovitch Demsky.

Cary Grant wouldn't have been Cary Grant if he had stayed with Archibald Alexander Leach.

Fred Astaire was Frederick Austerlitz and his dance partner, Ginger Rogers, was born Virginia Katherine McMath.

Marilyn Monroe was considered a gawky kid when she was Norma Jean Mortensen.

Martin Sheen was Ramon Antonio Gerard Estevez. His son Charlie Sheen was Carlos Estevez, but his brother Emilio Estevez stuck to the original.

Audrey Hepburn was Edda Kathleen van Heemstra Hepburn-Ruston. That was a wise change.

Judy Garland began as Frances Gumm.

Carmen

And name changing is still pretty common.

You didn't think Carmen Electra was born with that name, did you? She was the less exciting Tara Patrick.

Madam Secretary star Tea Leoni is a version of her given name of Elizabeth Tea Pantaleoni.

Helen Mirren wisely opted out from Ilyena Lydia Vasilievna Mironov.

The normal-sounding Julianne Moore had the perhaps-too-normal-sounding Julie Anne Smith at birth.

Michael Keaton went with a new surname because his real name, Michael Douglas, was already in use in movies.

Director Spike Lee added some spike to his given name,  Shelton Lee.

Pseudonyms: Noms de Plume and Noms de Guerre

Pseudonyms are used by many celebrities. One version is the "pen name" (nom de plume) which is a variant form of a real name adopted by an author and printed on the title page or by-line of his or her works in place of their "real" name.

Why use a pseudonym? Actors and others often change their names to make them sound more "normal," less ethnic, or even to sound more exotic. Authors might do it for those reasons too, but they also have other reasons.

The French phrase nom de plume is occasionally used as a synonym for the English term "pen name." This is known as "back-translation." The term nom de plume "evolved" in Britain, but there was already the term nom de guerre used in French. The British didn't understand that particular usage as guerre means "war" in French, and for authors, this made no sense, so they created (not borrowed) their own "French" phrase.  

Lemony Snicket is the pen name of American novelist Daniel Handler, and Lemony is also the narrator of many of his novels. He used the name while doing research for his first book when he needed to give a name in order to obtain materials that were "offensive" because he didn't want to use his real name.

Some authors, mostly women, have used pseudonyms to disguise gender and ensure that their works were accepted by publishers and/or the public.

Mary Ann Evans wrote under the pen name George Eliot.

Amandine Aurore Lucile Dupin, Baronne Dudevant, used the much more common pseudonym George Sand.

Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë had published under the names Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell respectively.

Karen Blixen's book Out of Africa was originally published under the pen name Isak Dinesen.

I used to teach the popular young adult novel The Outsiders, which is listed on the cover as being written by S.E. Hinton. And that is the author's name and initials, but S.E. is Susan Eloise Hinton. The male-oriented novel might not have had many male readers if it carried a female name.

Other women using initials include Harry Potter creator J. K. (Joanne) Rowling, K. A. Applegate, P. N. Elrod, D. C. Fontana, G. A. Riplinger, and J. D. Robb.

Initials can also be used to avoid confusion with another author or notable individual. The very famous British politician Winston Churchill wrote under the name Winston S. Churchill to distinguish his work from the then better-known American novelist of the same name.

Mathematician and fantasy writer Charles Dodgson, also wrote his Alice and Wonderland fiction as Lewis Carroll.

Samuel Langhorne Clemens used the aliases Mark Twain and less often Sieur Louis de Conte for different works.

Joseph Conrad was the Anglicized choice made by Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, the 20th-century Polish-British author.

American author of short stories and novels, O. Henry, was really William Sydney Porter.

Stephen King published four novels under the name Richard Bachman because publishers didn't feel the public would buy more than one novel per year from a single author.

Anne Rice (Howard Allen Frances O'Brien) also used two other aliases: Anne Rampling and A.N. Roquelaure.

Japanese poets who write haiku often follow the tradition of using a pen name (haigō). The haiku master Matsuo Bashō had used two other haigō before he became fond of a banana plant (bashō) that had been given to him by a disciple, and started using it as his pen name starting at age 36.

At one time in France, a nom de guerre was a "war name" adopted or assigned to new recruits as he enlisted in the French army. These pseudonyms were official and a kind of predecessor of identification numbers.

Soldiers were identified by their first names, their family names, and their noms de guerre. These pseudonyms were usually related to the soldier's place of origin. Jean Paul dit Champigny might be used for a soldier coming from the town of Champigny. In 1716, a nom de guerre was mandatory for every enlisted soldier. Some of these noms de guerre eventually replaced the real family name.

Revolutionaries and resistance leaders who came later and outside of France, such as Lenin, Trotsky, Golda Meir, Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque, and Josip Broz Tito, sometimes adopted their noms de guerre as their proper names.

Pseudonyms: Criminals

It seems that many major criminals either take on pseudonyms (aliases) or have them assigned to them.

The Unabomber (Ted Kaczynski) was assigned his pseudonym from the FBI acronym for UNiversities and Airline Bomber.

New York Police discovered in 1977 a handwritten letter near the bodies of two victims that was addressed to a NYPD Captain. In the letter, the killer referred to himself as "Son of Sam" for the first time. The press had previously dubbed the killer "the .44 Caliber Killer" because it was the weapon of choice for serial killer David Berkowitz.

Here are some of the better known criminal pseudonyms and their owners.

• Al Capone was really Alphonse Gabriel Capone
• Baby Face Nelson (Lester Joseph Gillis; also used the alias George Nelson)
• Billy the Kid (William H. Bonney; born William Henry McCarty, Jr.)
• Black Bart (Charles Earl Bowles)
• Bugsy Siegel (Benjamin Siegelbaum)

• Butch Cassidy (Robert LeRoy Parker) and The Sundance Kid (Harry Alonzo Longabaugh)
• Carlos the Jackal (Ilich Ramírez Sánchez)
• Dutch Schultz (Arthur Flegenheimer)
• Green River Killer (Gary Leon Ridgway)
• The Happy Face Killer (Keith Hunter Jesperson)
• Hillside Strangler was the collective pseudonym used for for two serial killers, Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi.
• The Iceman (Richard Kuklinski)
• The I-5 Killer (Randall Woodfield)
• Legs Diamond (Jack Diamond)
• Lucky Luciano (Salvatore Lucania)
• Machine Gun Kelly (George Celino Barnes)
• Murf the Surf (Jack Roland Murphy)
• Ned Kelly (Edward Kelly)
• The Night Stalker (Richard Ramirez)
• Pretty Boy Floyd (Charles Arthur Floyd)
• Sara Jane Olson (Kathleen Soliah)
• The Yorkshire Ripper (Peter Sutcliffe)

We currently do not have real names to attach to some pseudonyms, including from the distant past:  the still unsolved Jack the Ripper murderer  - and the more modern Zodiac Killer.

Pseudonyms: Collective Author Names

A collective name, also known as a house name, is sometimes used with series fiction published under one pen name even though more than one author may have contributed to the series.

In some cases the first books in the series were written by one writer, but subsequent books were written by ghostwriters. For instance, many of the later books in The Saint adventure series were not written by Leslie Charteris, the series' originator.

     

From my own childhood reading days, I learned that the Hardy Boys mystery books were not all written by Franklin W. Dixon, though they are all published under that name.

My sister read the similarly pen-named Nancy Drew mystery books which are published as though they were written by one Carolyn Keene.

The Bobbsey Twins series are credited to Laura Lee Hope, although several authors have been involved in each series.

Erin Hunter, the real name of the author of the Warriors novel series, is also a collective pen name used by authors Kate Cary, Cherith Baldry, Tui T. Sutherland, and the editor Victoria Holmes.

Collaborative authors may have also their works published under a single pen name. Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee were cousins who published their co-written mystery novels and stories under the pen name Ellery Queen. It was also the name of their fictional detective, and they also published the work of ghost-writers under the same name.

Pseudonyms

Pseudonyms are names adopted by a person for a particular purpose, which differs from his or her true name. There are so many examples of pseudonyms that I will have to break this topic into several posts in order to cover author "pen names," and those chosen by musicians, social activists, politicians, actor stage names, visual artists, athletes, fashion designers, or criminals.
Even fictional characters that are not real have pseudonyms, for example, almost all superheroes.

Just a few examples from various fields:

The visual artist Caravaggio was born Michelangelo Merisi, while Le Corbusier (Charles Edouard Jeanneret) Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky) and Marc Chagall (Moishe Shagal) were all known for their pseudonyms.

Social activists Mahatma Gandhi (Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi) and Mother Teresa (Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu), Malcolm X (Malcolm Little), Mother Jones (Mary Harris Jones) are best known for their pseudonyms. Israeli leader Golda Meir was originally Golda Meyerson.

Taking activism to another revolutionary level, during the underground fight against the British in Mandatory Palestine, commander Yitzchak Shamir (later Prime Minister of Israel) adopted the nom de guerre "Michael", in honour of Ireland's Michael Collins. Mexican revolutionary Francisco "Pancho" Villa was José Doroteo Arango Arámbula. North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh was Nguyễn Sinh Cung and Russian dictator Joseph Stalin was originally Ioseb Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili.

During World War II, the German pilot known as The Red Baron was really Manfred von Richthofen, but he was known as The Red Knight, which was the pseudonym created by British journalists for von Richthofen.

Stage and Screen Names

When used by an actor, performer, or model, a pseudonym is called a stage name or screen name.

Actors sometimes use a screen name to make it less apparent their ethnic or racial background. Jewish comedian and "Daily Show" host Jon Stewart was born Jonathan Stewart Leibowitz. However, when asked why he dropped Leibowitz during a "60 Minutes" interview, Stewart explained that it "sounded too Hollywood".

On the other hand, John Wayne, working on his tough guy image, dropped his given name of Marion Morrison.

Stan Laurel of the Laurel and Hardy comedy team was born Arthur Stanley Jefferson and used Stan Jefferson until he realized that it had an unlucky thirteen letters.

When the studio system was strong in Hollywood and contract players were common, studios often changed an actor's name.

Roy Harold Fitzgerald became Rock Hudson.

Today, an actor is more likely to take a pseudonym because someone else has already achieved fame with that name. Actor and writer guilds and unions (SAG, WGA, AFTRA) have rules for the use of names already registered for credits, at times refusing to allow an identical name to be used again.

In the music world, pseudonyms have been used to allow artists to collaborate with artists on other labels while avoiding the need to gain permission from their own labels.

Beatle George Harrison played guitar on a Cream recording of a song he co-wrote with Eric Clapton called "Badge" and he is credited on the recording as "L'Angelo Mysterioso".

Most hip hop musicians generally prefer to use a pseudonym that represents some variation of their name, personality, or interests. Diddy was formerly known as Sean Combs, P. Diddy, and Puff Daddy. Hip hop artists seem to like using numerals, such as 2Pac from the given name of Tupac Shakur, and 50 Cent who was born Curtis Jackson.

Pen Names

Pseudonyms are "false" names or names that are not the true (given) names of an individual. They are one of a larger group of -onyms and -nyms (like synonyms and antonyms) in English - many more than we were taught in school.

Pseudonyms, when used by an author, are called pen names.

Some Famous Pen Names

Richard Bachman is Stephen King, 20th century American horror author

Acton Bell, Currer Bell, and Ellis Bell were the names used by Anne Brontë, Charlotte Brontë, and Emily Brontë

Mary Westmacott is Agatha Christie, 20th century British mystery writer

Anthony Burgess is John Burgess Wilson, 20th century British writer, author of A Clockwork Orange.

Lewis Carroll is Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, 19th century British author, mathematician, known best for Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Sue Denim is used by Dav Pilkey, a writer and illustrator of the popular "Captain Underpants" children's book series and is also used by science fiction writer Lewis Shiner. Sue Denim is a parody of the word pseudonym itself.

Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen), 20th century Danish author of Out of Africa

H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), 20th century American poet, novelist and memoirist

George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans), 19th century English novelist

C. S. Forester (Cecil Smith), 20th century writer of the Captain Horatio Hornblower novels and The African Queen

O. Henry (William Sidney Porter), American author of short stories and novels

Hergé (Georges Remi), 20th century Belgian comics writer and artist, famous worldwide for creating the Tintin series of books

Ann Landers (Esther Pauline Friedman), and Abigail Van Buren/Dear Abby (Pauline Esther Friedman Phillips), advice columnists

Stan Lee (Stanley Martin Lieber), comic book pioneer & Spiderman creator

Molière (Jean Baptiste Poquelin), 17th century French theater writer, director and actor, and writer of comic satire.

George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair), 20th century British author of Animal Farm and 1984

Ellery Queen     Frederic Dannay and Manfred B. Lee shared this pen name for their 20th century detective fiction

Saki (Hector Hugh Munro), 20th century British short story writer and satirist

George Sand (Armandine Lucie Aurore Dupin), 19th century French novelist and early feminist

Dr. Seuss (Theodore Seuss Geisel), also used "Theo. LeSieg", 20th century American writer and cartoonist best known for his of children's books

Lemony Snicket is the listed author of A Series of Unfortunate Events but is really the pen name of Daniel Handler

Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle),19th century French writer

Mark Twain    Samuel Langhorn Clemens (also used "Sieur Louis de Conte" for his fictional biography of Joan of Arc) 19th century American humorist, writer and lecturer

Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet), 18th century French Enlightenment writer, deist and philosopher