AN AUTHOR BY ANY OTHER NAME By Michael Rigg

Many writers choose to hide their true identity and publish their works under pen names, sometimes referred to by the French phrase nom de plume, or the really fancy word, pseudonym. Why is that? Why wouldn’t you want to use your own name? After all, don’t you want proclaim to the world, “Hey, I wrote that!”?

According to Jennifer Sommersby, a/k/a Eliza Gordon, there are four primary reasons why a writer chooses to use a pen name: Confidentiality, Anonymity, Branding, and Gender Respect. Regarding Confidentiality:

Some writers want and/or need to keep their writing life completely separate from their day-to-day life, so that’s where a top-secret pen name might come into play. It’s very freeing to know you can write about something naughty or scary, and it won’t come up at a board meeting or in your employee review with an ultraconservative or snobby boss.

As for Anonymity? Many writers are introverts, i.e., they are not “attention-seeking weirdos.” Or, they want to maintain their privacy, especially “. . . after experiencing threats or other harm to their person or families.” Moreover, “Some writers want to make sure their kids or partners are protected from outside attention.”

Branding is another reason. If you write in different genres, having two names keeps the author’s brands separate. Can you imagine if Dr. Seuss also wrote erotica? (Maybe he did, but it certainly wasn’t under the name Dr. Seuss.) Or, “Think about Nora Roberts vs. JD Robb, though. Same author but two VERY different styles of books, right?” But, having two names can be very confusing at book signings.

Finally, there’s Gender Respect. “[T]he name on the front of a book can have an impact on a buyer’s choice.” Think of J. K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series. Rowling’s publishers, believing that the stories would appeal to both boys and girls, recommended using initials (J.K.) and not the author’s name (Joanne). And Rowling’s not the only example. “Did you know George Eliot, acclaimed novelist and poet who wrote Middlemarch and Silas Marner, was actually a woman? Her real name was Mary Anne Evans.”

How do you find a pen name? One of the most famous is Mark Twain, the pseudonym of Samuel Langhorne Clemens. How he got from Clemens to Twain is very interesting.

According to the blog Connell Guides, “Before “Mark Twain” he was “Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass.” And before “Thomas Jefferson Snodgrass” he was “Sieur Louis de Conte,” “John Snook” and even “Josh.” But how did he settle on “Mark Twain”? Connell Guides continues:

Up until now there have been a number of competing theories about Clemens’s pseudonym. Most popular is the suggestion that the name derived from the riverboat call, “by the mark, twain.” Twain was an old-fashioned way of saying two, and the call referred to sounding a depth of two fathoms, which was just safe enough for a steamboat travelling down the Mississippi. The problem with this interpretation is that “twain” would have been an uncommon word choice on the Mississippi – [research by Kevin] MacDonnell . . . shows that Clemens’s own journals from his steamboat days use “mark two” instead of “mark twain.

The Nevada Sentinel newspaper claimed that the name came from the way a local saloon in Virginia City, Nevada kept a tally of Clemens’s bar bill by making chalk marks on the wall. “Clemens supposedly asked the barman to “mark twain” against his tab so often that the phrase became a nickname.”

Clemens himself debunked the The Nevada Sentinel’s claim in a letter, which reads:

‘Mark Twain’ was the nom de plume of one Captain Isaiah Sellers, who used to write river news over it for the New Orleans Picayune: he died in 1863 and as he could no longer need that signature, I laid violent hands upon it without asking permission of the proprietor's remains. That is the history of the nom de plume I bear.

Straight from the horse’s mouth. Must be true, right? Well, according to the Connell Guides blog, “MacDonnell, however, argues that this response is only a symptom of Clemens’s notorious tendency to tell tall tales and stretch the truth.” The blog elaborates:  

MacDonnell’s research led him to discover a sketch that uses the name in 1861, two years before Clemens says he adopted it. The magazine in question was the comedic journal Vanity Fair (unrelated to today’s Vanity Fair) – which Clemens later referred to as an early influence on his work. The sketch depicts a group of Charleston mariners who are “abolishing the use of the magnetic needle, because of its constancy to the north.” The characters involved are named “Mr. Pine Knott,” “Lee Scupper,” and “Mark Twain.

The three names are nautical puns: the first for dense wood, the second for a drain and the third for shallow depth. Clemens took a liking to the latter, adapted it and invented the Captain Sellers story later in order to promote his burgeoning series of riverboat writings.

Hmmm. A tall tale about a fake name? Seems like something Mark Twain would do. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go whitewash a fence.

(Sources: Why do writers use pen names? — Eliza Gordon; Biography - Mark Twain House; and The origin of Mark Twain’s name – Connell Guides.)