Words & WritingGreek → English
Pseudonym
/ˈsuːdənɪm/noun
An invented name used in place of a real one, especially by a writer.
The Greek roots
ψευδής
pseudḗs
false, lying
ὄνυμα
ónyma
name
Literally: “false name”
The story of the word
The Greek adjective ψευδώνυμος is old, used in tragedy for something wrongly named. The English noun is not: it came through French in the nineteenth century, when the book trade had grown fond of invented authors. Mary Ann Evans took George Eliot in 1857; the Brontë sisters published as the Bell brothers. The first element is the pseudo- of every fake in scientific naming.
- How it travelled
- Ancient Greek → French → English
- First recorded
- 19th century
Same family
pseudoscienceanonymoussynonymacronym
In a sentence
She wrote the crime novels under a pseudonym so her students would not find them.