An explanation of this part of the blog, and a list of all the sub-categories, can be found on the list of Pages on the top-right of your screen.
Pseudonyms 1 gave you:
1. Genuine Pseudonyms: noms de plume, de brosse, de camera, de highwire
in one case, plus aliases, and even noms de guerre and de religion
2. Nicknames now assumed to be, or treated as, their actual name
3. Translations from foreign languages (mostly into English but I have included Latinisations and some others)
Pseudonyms 2 will give you some of the other ways that people have chosen to change their names:
4. I prefer to use other (or fewer) parts of my name(s)
5. Does it have to be spelled that way?
6. Stick to the initials
7. Word-games and other oddities
*
4. I prefer to use other (or fewer) parts of my name(s)
Names here are
listed by their full birth-name in bold, with the reductions deboldificated
Note that I am not (I guess that should read
"I'm not") including diminutives such as Rosie for Rosalind Franklin
or Art for Arthur Garfunkel etc, unless, like Dante, that diminutive has become
the name by which they are known
Interesting to discover just how many people don’t
like their first name, and so decline to use it; and how many don’t like their
last name, and so replace it with a middle name
Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo: Referenced on Feb 2;
quoted on Feb 5; oblivious on Aug 12, Oct 4
and Dec 5; birthdate noted on Aug 24; referenced on July 3 and Sept
13; and pseudonymised on Feb 8
[serious scribes]
Albert
Chinụalụmọgụ (Chinua) Achebe: born
on Nov 16
[serious scribes and Africa page]
Durante (Dante) di
Alighiero degli Alighieri: learning the sonnet from Immanuel Giudeo on Jan 13 (which I only mention here because
being called “Giudeo” - “the Jew” - is another kind of nickname, with emphasis
on the Nick; expelled from Florence on Jan 27;
honoured by Sam Beckett on April 13, Mo
Mowlam on April 24, and Victor Hugo on Oct
18; in his tomb in Ravenna on June 24;
alongside Ariosto on Sept 8, and Vergil
on Oct 15; eponymised on March 11 and Aug
24; referenced on Jan 3, Jan 8, March 30,
June 11 and Sept 4 [The Poets] Dante
is to Durante what Dave is to David, or really what David is to Jedediah
(Yedid-Yah in Hebrew): a diminutive; the Italian word means “"steadfast"
or "enduring"
Hernán Cortés de Monroy y
Pizarro Altamirano
(Fernando Cortez to most Italians and
Portuguese): landed in
Anahuac (México) on March 4; traduced
Montezuma on June 30 (sung by Neil
Young on both dates) [pre-Columban Americas]
Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Pierre Filibert Guglielmi di Valentina d'Antonguella (Rudolph Valentino): Feb 14,
May 6
William John Banville:
in Prague on March
11 and Sept
2 (plus a link to these on March 29) [serious
scribes]
Katherine
Mansfield Beauchamp: born Oct 14, died Jan 9 [serious
scribes]
Henry
Maximilian ("Max") Beerbohm: born Aug 24 [lighter writers]
Ernst Ingmar
Bergman: born July 14 [the
world as stage]
Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto:
born on June 21; assassinated on Dec 27
Alexandre-César-Léop Georges
Bizet: born Oct
25 [musical maestros]
Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás (George Santayana):
born Dec 16 [philosophers]
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht: born Feb 10; "St Joan of the
Stockyards" on May
30; mentioned on May
16 and July
3 [the world as stage and responses to bullying]
Edward Benjamin Britten: born Nov 22 [musical maestros]
Dorris
Alexander "Dee" Brown: though
I guess a case could be made that he was just diminuting all the way to its
initial, and then pretending it was his real name (but who on earth would name
a boy-child Dorris? of course he dumped it); amongst the banned books on Dec 6 [serious
scribes]
Josef Anton Bruckner: born Sept 4; 9th symphony
premièred on Feb 11 [musical maestros]
Magdalena
Carmen Frida
Kahlo y Calderón: born July 6, but the full tale
is told on Sept
17 (and Dec
8 for Diego Rivera); plus
a slightly tongue-in-cheek reference on Nov 30 [illustrious
illustrators]
Lope Félix de Vega y Carpio: born Nov 25 [reverend
writers]
Pau Carlos (Pablo) Salvador
Defillo de Casals: playing for JFK
on Nov 13;
mentioned on Aug
19 [musical maestros]
Gabrielle-Émilie
Le Tonnelier de Breteuil, Marquise du Châtelet: quite
probably the most extraordinarily brilliant human being before Einstein on June 12, with mentions on May 30 and Aug 8, a listing on the the Ancien Régime page of "Woman-Blindness", and her rightful place amongst the élite pursuers of E,M&C2
Charles Bruce
Chatwin: memorialised on Feb 14; also appears on his birthday,
which is May 13,
on Aug 17
as a whimsical poem, and on Dec
5 as a whimsical idea [serious scribes]
Avram Noam Chomsky:
born Dec 7 [the librarians of Babel]
Lucius Cassius
Dio Cocceianus: but remembered as Dio Cassius, which would be a name reversal for his nom de plume, but in
fact Cocceianus may not have been his last name anyway, but got added as an
error by later historians; heard the
continuing eruption of Mount Vesuvius on Aug 24 [historians]
Alfred Alistair Cooke (not the cricketer; he spells
it Alastair and without an “e” on Cook): born Nov 20 [serious
scribes]
William Robertson Davies: born Aug
28 [serious scribes]
Achille-Claude Debussy (born August 22 1862; died March 25
1918): merely mentioned on Feb 9;
influencing Lily
Boulanger on Aug 21 [musical maestros]
Fritz (but he changed it to Frederick) Theodore Albert Delius:
born Jan 29 [musical maestros]
Juan Manuel Puig Delledonne: born Dec 28 [serious scribes]
Marlene (Marie
Magdalene) Dietrich: born
Dec 27 [the world as stage]
Salvador Domingo
Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech: entered surreality on May 11; used even
more so on March
15 [illustrious illustrators]
Henri-Robert-Marcel Duchamp: bought a urinal on April 11; the Dada
Manifesto is on March
23 [illustrious illustrators]
Angela Isidora Duncan:
listed on her birthday, May
27, because her death was simply too horrible [the world as stage]
Anthony Panther West Fairfield: parented by Rebecca West and H.G. Wells on Dec 21
Joan Miró i Ferrà: born April 20 [illustrious illustrators]
Jean Bernard Léon Foucault: born Sept 18 [E,M&C2]
William (Liam)
Fox: unleashing daggers on Oct 13 - not tecnically a reduction, just a diminutive, but usually William goes
to Will, Bill or Guy, and not to Liam, so I am including it in order to note
the two strange anomalies (the other one, Guy, is from the Norman-French Guillaume)
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin: yet another
of Durand-Ruel’s great discoveries on
Feb 5, born June
7 [illustrious illustrators]
Heinrich
Friedrich Wilhelm Gesenius (born February 17 1786; died October 23 1842): the Bible in word-by-word
explanations on Jan 7; mentioned on Sept 7 [librarians of Babel]
Wilhelm
Richard Geyer (Wagner): all the evidence appears to confirm
that mum was having an affair with the actor and painter Ludwig Geyer well
before husband Carl Friedrich Wagner died; nor did she take long before
marrying Geyer, and Richard had that as his surname until he was old enough to
make his own decision.
Tolkiened
on Jan 3; born on May 22; "Tristan und Isolde"
premièred on June 10; “Die Walküre”
at the annual Wagner Festival at Bayreuth on July
22; studying with Weber on
Nov 19; mentioned as an influence on Feb 9, June 9
and Aug 21; merely mentioned on Feb 11, Oct 27
and Nov 6 [musical maestros]
Arthur
John Gielgud (born April 14 1904; died May 21
2000): the perfect radio voice on Aug 8 [the
world as stage]
Irwin Alan Ginsberg: Howled
into banishment on Jan 8 and Dec
6 [The
Poets]
Giotto: probably a diminutive, either of Angelotto
or more likely from Ambrogiotto
di Bondone: safe from limewash on June 24 [illustrious
illustrators]
Hippolyte Jean
Giraudoux: born Oct 29 [the world as
stage]
Odetta
Homes Felious Gordon: born Dec 31 [musical
maestros]
Salvador Guillermo Allende Gossens: overthrown on Sept 11
Henry Graham Greene: born Oct 2 [serious scribes]
Jocelyn Barbara Hepworth: wife of the other Ben Nicholson on March 28
Philip Antony Hopkins: acting the role of Antony what’s-his-name on June
24 and Aug 8 [the world as stage]
Edmund Josef
von Horváth; Ödön von Horváth on the cover of his novel “Ein Kind
unserer Zeit”, published in November 1938, shortly after his death at the age
of just 36; I am presuming that Ödön is simply a diminutive form
of Edmund: gave Michael
Tippett the title for an opera on March 19 [serious scribes]
Richard Edward Geoffrey Howe: the man who finally turned Queen Meg’s nickname into a reality, by
wielding it on June
15
James
Henry Leigh
Hunt: born Oct 19; wrote
“Hero and Leander” on May 3 [The Poets]
John Frank Kermode: judging the Booker Prize on
Dec 21
Joseph Rudyard Kipling: contrasted
with P.L Dunbar on Feb 9; born Dec
30; mentioned on April 18
and Sept 29 [serious scribes]
Nelle Harper Lee:
born April 28 (mention of Truman Capote whose Sept 30 page likewise mentions her); available for banning
on Dec 6 [serious scribes]
Joseph Fernand Henri Léger: born Feb
4 [illustrious illustrators]
Graziadio Carlo Levi: stopped
forever in Eboli on Jan 4 [serious scribes]
Harry
Sinclair Lewis: seeking God on Jan 1
[serious scribes]
Jonas Ferdinand Gabriel Lippman: : gave Daguerre colour on Aug
16 [illustrious illustrators]
Francesca
Gaetana Cosima Liszt, by birth, Cosima Wagner by marriage, mothered by Marie d'Agoult on Dec
24
Isabelle Allende Llona: better known without that last-name on Sept 11 and Pseudonyms [serious
scribes]
Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa: at
loggerheads with Gabo on March 15; quoted on Sept 1 [serious
scribes]
Clarence Malcolm Boden Lowry: erupted into
life on July 28; mentioned on Sept 17 and Dec
13 [serious
scribes]
Carlos Fuentes Macías: born Nov
11 [serious scribes]
Georges André Malraux: born Nov
3 [serious scribes]
Italo Giovanni Calvino Mameli: born Nov
3 [serious scribes]
Paul
Thomas Mann: born June 6 [serious
scribes]
William
Somerset Maugham: born Jan 25;
taken swiftly to Margate on Dec 29 [serious scribes]
Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant: born Aug 5
[serious scribes]
James Martin
Pacelli McGuinness,
or Séamus Máirtín Pacelli Mag
Aonghusa in Éirish: holding a secret meeting with Willie Whitelaw on Sept 29
Herbert Marshall McLuhan: born July
21 [the librarians of Babel]
Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy: born Feb 3; given as a prize on April 1; played
by Pablo Casals on Nov 13 [musical maestros]
Sergio Ramirez (Mercado): burying his fathers on Jan 18; [serious scribes, though he
could as well be on the political ideologues page
Alton Glenn Miller: went awol on Dec 15 [musical maestros]
Abū al-Qāsim Muḥammad
ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbd
al-Muṭṭalib ibn
Hāshim (Mohammed
to
you and me): mentioned
on May 29;
referenced on June 19; made
Hijrah on Sept 24 [reverend writers]
Oscar Claude Monet:
born Nov 14; discovered by Durand-Ruel on Feb
5; mentioned on Oct 6 [illustrious illustrators]
Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa: born
Nov 24; discovered by Durand-Ruel
on Feb 5 [illustrious
illustrators]
Charles
Louis Secondat (Baron de La
Brède et de Montesquieu): but only that very last ever gets remembered,
and perhaps his title:
quoted and quoted on Jan 18; the innocent source of the world’s most
anti-Semitic book on Aug 26; referenced on June
19 [philosophers]
Chloe Anthony (“Tony”) Wofford Morrison: amongst the banned
books on Dec 6; and listed here, not
primarily because she used her second rather than her first name, but
because... well, honestly, why would you give a girl such an obviously boy’s
name ? [serious scribes]
Van (George Ivan) Morrison: Aug 31 [musical maestros]
Johannes Chrysostomus
Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart ("Amadeus" is a Latin translation of Theophilus and was not his name, but simply Mozart amusing himself): his
"Adagio" performed by Gideon Klein
on April 1; his G major piano
concerto, K. 453, played by Ernő
Dohnányi on July 27; died in poverty on Dec 5; mentioned on Feb 25, March 19 and April
16 [musical maestros]
Jean Iris Murdoch:
born July 15 [serious scribes]
Ed (sort of short for Egbert) Roscoe Murrow:
born on April 25
Alfred Louis Charles de Musset-Pathay: born Dec 11; died May
2; played love-poems with George Sand
on July 1 [the
world as stage]
Imran Ahmad Khan Niazi: everything that's gone
wrong since Pakistan was created, told in the life of one man, on Dec 27
Josephine Edna O'Brien:
born Dec 15 [serious
scribes]
Julius Robert
Oppenheimer: born April 22
Thomas
Pain (he added
the "e"): born Jan 29;
another of Joseph Johnson's circle of
radical thinkers on April
27; with Sophie
de Grouchy on May 5; slightly satirised on May 9 [political ideologues and responses to bullying]
Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad de Bolívar y Palacios: ”El Libertador” in London on June 24; full story on July 5; compared with El Cid on July
10; negatively role-modelling on July
23; named president of Peru on Sept
10; has a country named for him on Nov
3 [political ideologues]
José Julián Martí Pérez: born Jan 28; killed May
19 [political ideologues and The Cuban List]
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios
Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso (honestly!): Guernica on April 26, Georges
Braque on May 13; Max Jacob on Aug 19; provides an illustration in both senses on Sept 13 and 17; mentioned
somewhat obscurely on Oct 8; his
earliest known painting on Oct 22; born Oct 25; dinner with Matisse
on Dec 12 [illustrious illustrators] can you imagine if
he had used his full name as a signature on his paintings (I think I shall try
it, Cubist-style, just to see!)
Jacob Abraham
Camille Pissarro: dad was Jewish, mum Creole, but in those days of Dreyfus who would be so foolish as to use their Hebrew names? Yet one more
for Durand-Ruel on Feb 5 [illustrious illustrators
Rajmund Roman Thierry
Polański: born Aug 18 [the world as stage]
Paul Jackson Pollock:
born Jan 28; mentioned on Oct 21;
the surname doesn’t have the same resonances in American as it does in English;
had he been English I have no doubt he would have adopted an alternate surname
as well, to avoid having the critics describe his paintings in the plural [illustrious
illustrators]
Christopher George Dennis Potter: the
absolute peak of the golden age of TV playwrights on Dec 3
[the
world as stage]
Francis Gary Powers:
shot down on May 1
Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust: entered lost time on July 10; mentioned on July 1, July 3, July 12, July
14, Aug 14, Aug 17, Oct 2 [serious scribes]
Joseph Maurice Ravel: cresting
the wave on Feb 9; his “Kaddish ‘In Memoriam’" on April 1; rearranging Mussorgsky on June 2 [musical maestros]
Johann Baptist Joseph Maximilian
(“Max”) Reger: taught Erwin Schulhoff in Leipzig on April
1 [musical maestros]
Bernice
Ruth Reuben (Bernice Rubens on some of
her book-covers): second winner of the Booker Prize on Dec 21 [is this a reduction, a translation or
a pseudonym? or all three and therefore should be among the Word-Games?]
Jean
Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud: born Oct 20; physically attacked on July 10; verbally attacked on Oct 8 [The Poets]
and exactly the same question here as for Bernice Rubens,
above: Anthony Widvill Rivers, but
remembered as Anthony Woodville: giving Caxton
his first book on Nov 18
[The Poets]
François-Auguste-René
Rodin: born Nov 12 [illustrious illustrators]
Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y
Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez (Diego Rivera): Dec 8; Sept 17 for Frida
Kahlo [illustrious illustrators]
Ahmad Salman Rushdie: born on June 19; fatwahed on Feb 14; quoted on April
23 [serious scribes]
Henry Kenneth (Ken) Alfred Russell: born July
3 [the world as stage]
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz: overthrow of Batista on Jan
1; José Martí on Jan 28; sworn in on Feb 16; the "26th of July Movement" on July 26; born Aug
13; mistaken for Hemingway
on July 2; Casals and the Bay of Pigs on Nov
13; satirised on Dec 1 [political ideologues]
Daniel Ortega Saavedra: born Nov 11 [political
ideologues]
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra: April 23 with Shakespeare;
Alberto Manguel’s account of him on June 27; his portrait on Nov 25; he is mentioned on Jan 18, March
29
and J
Charles-Camille
Saint-Saëns: born Oct 9 [musical maestros]
Bruno Walter Schlesinger - but he dropped the surname when he took up the position of musical
theatre director in Breslau in 1895: click here for more on that, and on his blacklisting by the Nazis; conducting Bruckner on Feb 11 [musical maestros]
Ludwig
Philipp Albert Schweitzer: born on Jan 14 (and a cartoon for a birthday present) [reverend writers]
David Paul
Scofield: A Man For A Silent Execution on July
6 [the
world as stage]
Ezra, whose full name and full family ancestry is given in
chapter seven of his book: Ezra ben Sera-Yah ben Azar-Yah ben Chilki-Yah ben Shalum ben Tsadok
ben Achi-Tuv ben Amar-Yah ven Azar-Yah ben Merayot ben Zerach-Yah ven Uzi
ben Buki ben Avi-Shu'a ben Pinchas ben El-Azar ben Aharon ha Kohen ha Rosh; the third of those names, his grandfather, tells us that Ezra is in fact a
diminutive, and his full name would likewise have been Azar-Yah ("the aide to the full moon goddess"); the last,
"ha Kohen ha
Rosh", was the confirmation that he was a
direct descendant of Moses' brother Aaron (Aharon), the first High Priest
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni: born March
6; offered to build a tomb for Dante
on June 24; “can’t do fresco” on Aug 21 and Nov
1; referenced by Victor Hugo
on Oct 18; mentioned May 18 [illustrious
illustrators]
Akinwande Oluwole (Wole) Babatunde Soyinka: born July
13 [serious scribes]
Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein (Mme de Stael): born April 22
[political ideologues] also with Sophie de Grouchy
on May 5
Abraham (“Bram”) Stoker: famous for writing “Dracula” on Feb 1 and March 11 [the world as stage]
Johan
August Strindberg: born Jan 22
[the world as stage]
Ambroise Paul Toussaint
Jules Valéry: born Oct
30 [The Poets]
Marguerite-Charlotte Durand de Valfère: born to
Anna-Alexandrine-Caroline Durand de Valfère in 1864, though it took till 1878
for mum to acknowledge that she was the mother; and even then she couldn't be
sure who was the father, but either General Alfred Boucher or possibly Auguste
Clésinger; founder and editor of "La Fronde" on Dec 9 [serious
scribes]
Paul-Marie Verlaine: the reason for the first
half of Pablo Neruda’s pseudonym on Feb 8; tried to kill Rimbaud on July
10 [The Poets]
Eugene
Luther Gore Vidal: born Oct 3
[serious scribes]
Gene
Vincent: Vincent Eugene
Craddock doesn’t really work for a pop star, does it! Sept 14 [musical maestros]
Arthur Evelyn St. John
Waugh:
born Oct 28 [serious scribes]
George
Orson Welles: born May 6;
fought the war of the worlds by radio on Oct 30
[the world as stage]
Allen Lane Williams: born Sept
21 [serious scribes]
John Anthony Burgess
Wilson: Feb
8 [serious scribes]
Thomas Woodrow Wilson (born December 28 1856;
died February 3 1924): calling presidentially for a star-spangled banner on March 3
plus one who simply
preferred to use his mum’s rather than his dad’s last name:
Yevgeny Aleksandrovich Gangnus (Yevtushenko): born July 18;
mentioned re Mandelstam on Jan 8 [The Poets]
All the names in this list
are in their original spelling first, then their altered form, which is the one
by which we know them:
Solomon Bellows (Saul Bellow):
born July 10;
mentioned July 11 [serious scribes]
John Bunnion in
the parish records for his baptism, John Bunyan on
his book: buried in Bunhill Fields on his birthdate, Nov 28; in jail on Sept 28, but the book
written there was published on Feb
18 [reverend writers]
William Cuthbert Falkner (William
Faulkner: he changed the
spelling when he needed to sound British to join the Canadian RAF): at loggerheads with Hemingway
on March 15; born Sept 25; taking last orders on Dec 29; mentioned on Jan 1 and July
28 [serious scribes]
Nathaniel Hathorne (Nathaniel Hawthorne): “Scarlet
Letter” published on March 16; born on July 4, the book banned in 1852 (see under Dec 6) [serious
scribes]
David Home (pronounced
Hume,
and
formally changed to that spelling in 1734): listed with some of the key figures
of the European Enlightenment on Jan 18 [philosophers]
Leo Eugen Janáček, though he is remembered as Leoš Janáček (born July 3 1854; died August 12 1928): performed by Gideon Klein on April 1 [musical maestros]
Herman
Melvill(e): the “e” was
added by his father when Herman was
about 19; born Aug 1; published Nov 14; sources of “Moby-Dick” and “Billy
Budd” on Nov 20; banned Dec 6; referenced on Oct 26 and Nov
22 [serious scribes]
Giacomo Meyerbeer (Jakob Liebmann
Meyer Beer): died May 2 [musical maestros]
Lester William Polsfuss (Les Paul): born playing Gibson guitars on June 9 [musical
maestros]
and some people just come with variations, like
Thomas Bludworth (modern books spell him Bloodworth, but his birthname was probably Blidward, or it may even have
been Bludder - click here): the Lord Mayor who Pepys summoned,
but too late to put out the fire, on Sept 2
Farinace, though I
think it should be spelled Farinacci,
as in Prospero Farinacci, or Farinaccius in the Latin
pen-name on his “Praxis et Theorica Criminalis” of 1616”, the work that made
him famous; he goes with Beccaria on Oct 18 [political ideologues]
Johannes
Lippershey (sometimes Hans
Lippershey, or Lipperhey, sometimes Johannes Lippersein: (born circa 1570; died Setember 29 1619): invented the telescope on March 29 [scientific achievements and E,M&C2]
Edward Ludnam: or Ludlam, Ludlum and even Nuddlam, but really Ned Ludd on Dec
20
Miguel Servet (aka Miguel
Serveto, Michel Servet, Michael Servetus, Miguel de Villanueva, and Michel de
Villeneuve): condemned
to death for blasphemy on Oct 26 [reverend writers]
and of course Gulielmus
Shakspere's birthname as well - or should that go on the
translations page for Gulielmus - why not both!
*
6. Stick to the initials
To some degree this became a literary and
especially a poetic meshugas (that's "fashion" - oh alright "pretension"
in English) in the late 1800s and especially in the early 1900s
There is also the American silliness of keeping the
middle name as an initial; I am including only one of those here, because it
amuses me to participate with Mark Twain in his satire by treating Wm as an initial. But
none of the others, because this is about people who wish to be known
exclusively by their initials.
That one is Wm. C. Grimes: a rather minor Oklahoma politician, so not obvious why he was
writing about the Wandering Jew on March 11;
and indeed he wasn’t, it was Wm C Prime (William Cowper Prime, born October 31
1825; died February 12 1905: click here), but Mark Twain parodied him as Grimes, one “Innocent Abroad” mocking another -
click here. The Wandering Jew can be found on the
very next date, March
12. For Grimes, click here [serious scribes]
Malcolm X is also
X-cluded, on the grounds that his initial was intended to make him anonymous
W.H. (Wystan Hugh) Auden:
born Feb 21,
mentioned on May
2 [The Poets]
e.e. (Edward Estlin, no, sorry, that
should read edward estlin) cummings:
born Oct 14
HD (Hilda Doolittle): born Sept 10 [The Poets]
P.L. (Paul Laurence) Dunbar: died Feb 9 [The Poets and responses
to bullying]
T.S. (Thomas Stearns) Eliot: born Sept
26; quoted on Jan 24; chez Gertrude
Stein on Feb 3; turned
down Tippett on March 19; Harold
Bloom on July 11; insinuated on July 3 and 13; in Cheyne
Walk on Sept 29; buried
beneath the lilacs on Jan
4 [The Poets]
M.C. (Maurits Cornelis)
Escher: born June
18; pictured on June
26 [illustrious illustrators]
E.M. (Edward Morgan) Forster: born Jan 1; “only connected” on Jan 3, but, because you need two entities to make a
connection, on Sept 14 as well [serious scribes]
J.G. (James George) Frazer: born Jan 1; mentioned with Joseph Campbell on
March 26 [historians]
W. G. (William Gilbert) Grace:
passed his final test on June 1
W.C. (William Christopher) Handy: born Nov 16,
published "Memphis Blues” on Sept 27
[musical maestros]
A.E. (Alfred Edward) Housman: born March
26 [The Poets]
C.L.R. (Cyril Lionel Robert) James, but sometimes J. R. Johnson:
befriended George
Padmore on June 28 [historians]
k.d (Kathryn Dawn) lang: born Nov 2
[musical maestros] - which is virtually a pseudonym
D.H. (David Herbert) Lawrence: born Sept 11; Frieda Emma Johanna Maria Von Richtofen’s
account of his death is on March 2; Katherine Mansfield
on Jan 9; “Art for my sake” on Feb 28; borrowing
from Frankenstein on March 11; “John
Thomas and Lady Jane” on March 15; “Pansies” on June
19; “Plumed
Serpent” on June 30; David Hockney on July 9;
essay on Galsworthy on Aug 14; Crowed
and Naipauled on Aug 17; HD on Sept
10; mentioned on Oct 20; “The Rainbow” banned on Nov 13;
dead-heated with Mary Ann Evans on Nov 22 [serious scribes and illustrious illustrators]
T.E. (Thomas Edward) Lawrence (of Arabia): died May 19; filmed on June
24; an unlikely route to Aqaba on July 6; born Aug 15 [serious scribes]
G.E. (George Edward) Moore: he hated both names and never used them; even his wife knew him as Bill: born Nov 4 [philosophers]
F.R. (Frank Raymond) Leavis: among the giants of Lit Crit on July 11; obit here [serious scribes]
V.S. (Vidiadhar Surajprasad) Naipaul: born Aug 17 [serious scribes]
P. H.
(Percy Howard) Newby: winner of the
first Booker Prize on Dec 21
J.B. (John Boynton) Priestley: born Sept 13 [the world as stage]
J.D. (Jerome David) Salinger: born Jan 1,
banned Dec 6 [serious scribes] - unusual to find one among the Americans;
it was predominantly a British philia
R.S. (Ronald Stuart) Thomas : poetically bilingual
(that’s “dwyieithog” in Cymry) on Feb 9 [reverend writers]
J.R.R. (John Ronald Reuel) Tolkien: born Jan 3; mentioned on June
22 [serious scribes]; possibly creating a Golem on March 11
J.M.W. (Joseph Mallord William) Turner: though I
suspect we only initial him because we can't get ourselves to remember all
those uncommon names; we don't have the same trouble with, say, John Constable): creating a good impression on the French artists of the mid 19th
century on Feb 5; definitely a recognisable style on April 16 [illustrious
illustrators]; Ruskin's book
about him gets a mention on Anna Brownell Jameson's
page, May 17;
in Cheyne Walk on Sept 29; Vita Sackville-West on March 28; in Margate on Dec 29
H.G. (Herbert George) Wells: at DHL’s
bedside on March 2; in Rebecca West's bed on Dec 21; born Sept
21 [serious scribes]
W.B. (William Butler) Yeats: Easter Rebellion on April
24; born June 13; quoted Sept 1; photographed by Ottoline Morrell on Nov 22; mentioned on May 17 and June
24 [The Poets]
W. L. (William Leslie) Webb: chairing the first ever Booker Prize judges
panel on Dec 21
P.G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse: playing Guildernstern on Sept
2 [lighter writers]
I am also including George Bernard Shaw because, though he may not have done so, others since have regularly referred to him as G.B. Shaw: at home in Fitzroy Square on May 18; “St Joan” and “Man and Superman” on May 30; born July 26; performed in “Hamlet” on Sept 2; not doing much on Sept 10; actively doing Fabian Society summer school with Rebecca West on Dec 21; merely mentioned on May 16 [the world as stage]
and for exactly the same reason: Percy Bysshe Shelley: hymned Adonais on Feb 23; drowned July 8, but see Aug 13 as well; studied by Hélène Berr on April 10; also mentioned on Jan 1, Feb 1, Feb 21, March 11, April 27 and Aug 10 [The Poets]
and lastly, because he adopted the
initial for his nom de plume, and quite probably as a comment upon precisely
this literary pretension:O.
Henry ( William Sydney Porter); born Sept 11 [lighter
writers]
*
I am also including another way of using initials, something
generally only done in the Jewish world, which is to convert them into
acronyms; three of the more famous are on the blog:
Rabbi Judah Loew
ben Bezalel, the “Maharal” of Prague: doing battle with Friar Thaddeus on March 11 [reverend writers]; Maharal (מהר״ל) is
a Hebrew acronym for "Moreinu ha-Rav Loew", meaning "Our
Teacher, Rabbi Loew"
Moshe ben
Maimon (Maimonides, the "Rambam"): influenced Spinoza on Feb 21; born March 30; in Jerusalem
on Oct 12; discussing hygiene on Nov 14; referenced on Oct 10 [reverend writers]; Rambam is simply his name and title, Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, acronymmed
and exactly the same explantion for "Rashi" (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzhaki): recorded
words of Beruriah on Jan 12; destruction of Wurms on Feb 19; mentioned with Maimonides on March
30 and Oct 10 [reverend writers]
*
7. Word-games and other oddities and variations
The Karan d'Ash: or "Caran d'Ache",
depending on whether you are surfing him on a Russian (the Russian word for
"pencil" is Карандаш - "karandash" - derived from the Turkic "kara
tash", meaning "black stone" or graphite) or a Francophone search
engine. Why the difference? The specialist art pencil manufacturer was named in tribute to one of the users of the name,
Emmanuel
Poiré his birth
name, pseudonymed as "Caporal Poiré" for his early works, but as Caran d'Ache later on (click here). But our man on the blog on Dec 18 is an entirely different Karan d'Ash, Mikhail Nikolayevich Rumyantsev, born December 10 1901; died March 31 1983): for him click here and the world as stage
Marguerite Yourcenar was born
Marguerite Antoinette Jeanne Marie Ghislaine Cleenewerck de Crayencour; Yourcenar,
her pen-name, is an anagram (albeit with a C missing): born on June 8, but see especially Jan 24 [historians]
Hiram Ulysses Grant, which acronyms as “HUG”,
and he didn’t want to risk his political career on so easy a piece of satire,
so he first swapped the “H” and the “U”, then dropped the “H” altogether and
invented an “S”, a pure “S”, not an initial for a longer name, when he entered
Congress as Ulysses S. Grant:
reformed anti-Semite on Dec 17
Robin Hood: joining King
Yedid-Yah (David for short), Herakles, Yesha-Yah ben Yoseph (that's Jesus in Latin), and Guy Faux as yet one more version of the ancient corn-god/earth-god, on Feb 22, Oct 28, Dec 20 and Dec 29; the earliest form of the name in England was in fact his French version, Golin Robin, and entered Aenglisch with Robin spelled with a "y", Robyn
Johannes Chrysostomus
Wolfgangus Theophilus Mozart is
his name; Amadeus is a Latin
translation of Theophilus and was
simply Mozart amusing himself: his "Adagio" performed by Gideon Klein on April
1; his G major piano concerto, K. 453, played by Ernő Dohnányi on July 27;
died in poverty on Dec 5; mentioned
on March 19 and April 16 [musical maestros]
Andrea Palladio (Andrea di
Pietro della Gondola): a man who built in
Pietro (stone), mostly in Venice (where they use gondolas), and who learned his
skills as an apprentice in a workshop that specialised in sculptures of the
goddess Athena (Palladia in Italian); born Nov 30 [illustrious
illustrators]
Fernando António Nogueira
Pessoa: “Pessoa” is the Portuguese word for “person”, and I imagine
him being called to answer a question by his school-teacher, getting rather
sick of the inference of the name, and coming up with names of his own in order
to insist, not simply that “I am not just a person, I am fully a human being”,
but adding in his mind “and I will be whichever person I feel like being at that moment”; all of his heteronyms on Feb
8; mentioned on Feb 28 and
July 3; an entire page dedicated to
him on his deathdate, November 30, which
also has a link to my fuller essay about him in “Private Collection”; quoted on
Dec 1; and an obscure insinuation on Sept 30; as full a list of his
“heteronyms” as anyone has yet managed to construct can be found here
[The Poets]
Truman Streckfus Persons (Truman
Capote): born Sept
30;
mentioned on April 28; "In
Cold Blood" withdrawn on Dec 6 [serious scribes] Like Fernando Pessoa, I presume he wanted a name
that defined the person that he saw himself as being. The question then is: was
he using the Italian-Spanish meaning of “capote”, which is “a long cloak or
coat with a hood, worn especially as part of an army or company uniform”,
thereby designating himself as a kind of Robin Hood; or was he intending the
French slang, where a “capote” is a “condom”, rather than the French idiom,
which describes great joy - equivalent to “awesome” in modern American?
And three with the same name, but completely unrelated, except by the origin of the name:
Abdias do Nascimento: founded the Teatro Nacional do Negro in Rio de Janeiro in 1944; elected to the Brazilian Congress on a platform of promoting Afro-Brazilian rights in 1983 [pre-Columban Americas and the world as stage]
Celso Roberto Pitta do Nascimento: became the first black mayor of Sao Paulo, Brazil's largest city, in 1996 [pre-Columban Americas]
Edson Arantes do Nascimento (Pele): the 17 year-old Brazilian soccer star who led Brazil to its first World Cup title, in Stockholm, in 1958; born Oct 23
the name was that of the owner of the slave plantation
and one last sub-sub-category for this page - two who changed their names because they changed their gender:
Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning: the precise opposite of treason on Jan 3;
mentioned on Feb 22 [responses to bullying]
Catharine Jan Morris (James Humphry Morris previously): born Oct 2 [serious scribes]
*
click here for the last three sub-categories at Pseudonyms 3:
8. Self-aggrandisations
9. Hermaphronyms
10. I am content to be known by my husband’s name
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