Pen name

Nom de plume is an English-language expression, a translation of pen name. The French term is nom de guerre, or "war name". Allonym is another synonym for pseudonym.

Some authors take on pen names to conceal their identity: for example the Brontes, who felt they would either not be published at all, or not taken seriously as women authors. Others to segregate different types of work: Lewis Carroll because as Charles Lutwidge Dodgson he wrote mathematics papers; Agatha Christie wrote romantic novels as Mary Westmacott. Pseudonyms are not always secret: Stendahl's real name was known: at least one critic disparaged his pen name as an affectation.

Pen names of famous authors include:

• Guillaume Apollinaire (Guillaume Albert Vladimir Apollinaire de Kostrowitzky)
• Richard Bachman (Stephen King)
• 'BB' (Denys Watkins-Pitchford[?])
• Beachcomber (D.B. Wyndham-Lewis[?] and John Bingham Morton[?])
• Acton Bell, Currer Bell, and Ellis Bell (Anne Bronte, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte)
• Boz (Charles Dickens)
• Anthony Burgess (John Wilson)
• Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson)
• H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), American imagist poet
• George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)
• Paul Eluard (Eugène Grindel)
• Anatole France (Jacques Anatole François Thibault)
• O. Henry (William Sidney Porter)
• Murray Leinster (William Fitzgerald Jenkins)
• Molière (Jean Baptiste Poquelin)
• Gérard de Nerval (Gérard Labrunie)
• George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair)
• Ouida (Marie Louise de la Ramée)
• Q (Arthur Quiller-Couch)
• Pauline Réage (Dominique Aury)
• Saki (Hector Hugh Munro)
• George Sand (Armandine Lucie Aurore Dupin)
• Dr. Seuss (Theodore Seuss Geisel), also used "Theo. LeSieg"
• Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle)
• James Tiptree, Jr (Alice Sheldon)
• Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorn Clemens, also used "Sieur Louis de Conte" for his fictional biography of Joan of Arc)
• Voltaire (Francois-Marie Arouet)