Mononym

A mononymous person is an individual who is known by a mononym, or "single name". In some cases, that name has been selected by the individual, who may have originally been given a polynym ("multiple name"); in other cases, it has been determined by the custom of the country or by some interested segment of the public.

History

Molière

Voltaire

Stendhal

Colette

The structure of persons' names has varied across time and geography. The ancient Greeks and Hebrews were mononymous peoples, that is, each person received only a single name. This contrasted with the custom among the Romans, who by the Republican era and throughout the Imperial era used multiple names: a male citizen's name comprised three parts, praenomen (given name), nomen (clan name) and cognomen (family line within the clan) — the nomen and cognomen being virtually always hereditary.

Monarchs and other royalty, e.g., Napoleon, have traditionally availed themselves of the privilege of using a mononym, modified when necessary by an ordinal or descriptor. While many European royals have formally sported long chains of names, in practice they have tended to use only one or two and not to use surname. (The names of a few European kings have included surname — for example, those of most of Poland's elected kings, e.g., Stefan Batory.) In Japan, the emperor and his family have no surname, only a given name, such as Hirohito, which in practice is rarely used: out of respect and as a measure of politeness, Japanese prefer to say "the Emperor" or "the Crown Prince."

Some French authors have shown a predilection for mononyms. In the 17th century, the dramatist and actor Jean Baptiste Poquelin (1622–73), France's greatest comedy writer and "a figure of incalculable importance in the history of the theater", adopted the mononym stage name "Molière."

In the 18th century, François-Marie Arouet adopted the mononym "Voltaire", for both literary and personal use, in 1718 after his incarceration in Paris's Bastille, to mark a break with his past. The new name combined several features. It was an anagram for a Latinized version of his family surname, "Arouet"; it reversed the syllables of the name of a family château, "Airvault"; and it conveyed connotations of speed and daring through resonance with such French expressions as "voltige", "volte-face" and "volatile." "Arouet", by contrast, could not serve the purposes of the developing societal gadfly, given that name's associations with "roué" and with an expression that meant "for thrashing."

The 19th-century French novelist Henri-Marie Beyle used many pen names, most famously the mononym "Stendhal", adapted from the name of the little Prussian town of Stendal, birthplace of the German art historian Johann Joachim Winckelmann, whom Stendhal greatly admired.

In the 20th century, a fourth French writer, Colette (author of Gigi, 1945), used her authentic surname as her mononymous pen name.

In 20th-century Poland, the theater-of-the-absurd playwright, novelist, painter, photographer and philosopher Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz after 1925 often used the mononymous pseudonym "Witkacy", a conflation of his surname (Witkiewicz) and middle name (Ignacy).

A number of visual artists, e.g. Michelangelo, Titian, Tintoretto, Caravaggio, are commonly known by mononyms. The modern Russian artist Erté formed his mononymous pseudonym from the initials of his actual name.

Italian painter Bernardo Bellotto, who is now ranked as an important and original painter in his own right, traded on the mononymous pseudonym of his uncle and teacher, Antonio Canal (Canaletto), in those countries—Poland and Germany—where his famous uncle was not active, calling himself likewise "Canaletto." Bellotto remains commonly known as "Canaletto" in those countries to this day.

Modern times

Witkacy

Tintoretto

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Cher

Teller

Sting

Madonna

Bono

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Enya

In modern times, in countries that have long been part of the Chinese cultural sphere — Japan, Korea, Vietnam, China itself — names usually comprise a family name (surname), followed by a given name (the opposite of the sequence used in European countries, except for Hungary). "Middle names" are not generally used.

In the Chinese cultural sphere, however, the current structure of persons' names (family name + given name) is, in some countries, of recent adoption. Thus, in Japan it was not introduced until the 1870s, when the government instituted a new family registration system. In feudal Japan, names had reflected a person's social status and religious, occupational and class affiliations. Before feudal times, Japanese clan names had figured prominently in individuals' names.

A single name remains a common usage in Indonesia, especially on the island of Java, not only for the famous, such as Sukarno and Suharto, but for ordinary people as well. Single names still also occur in Tibet and Mongolia.

In the West, mononymity, as well as its use by royals in conjunction with titles, has been a luxury that has been the privilege of famous persons such prominent writers, artists, entertainers, musicians and sportsmen.

Some persons, e.g., Chryssa, have had polynymous names that were unwieldy, or unfamiliar and difficult to remember or to pronounce in the community in which they were currently active, but have not wanted to entirely change their names to something more familiar to the broad public at the cost of abandoning their sense of self-identification, and so have used only a single part of their full names.

Other individuals, e.g., Iman, Madonna, Sting and Bono, have chosen to use mononyms for the sake of the familiarity — hence, celebrity or notoriety — that such names suggest: one does not refer to an obscure person by only his given name, as other persons would not know to whom one is referring. Some mononym stage names are merely the performer's actual given name (e.g., Madonna, Björk, Jewel, Beck), while others may be the performer's actual surname (e.g., Teller, Morrissey).

In Lusophone countries such as Portugal, Angola and especially Brazil, football players often adopt a mononym, e.g., Pelé, Romário, Ronaldo, Deco, and Kaká. Also the president of Brazil is simply known as Lula. Such mononyms take their origin in given names and nicknames, used because Portuguese names tend to be rather long.

Teller, an illusionist and comedian, and the silent half of the duo, Penn & Teller, legally changed his original polynym, "Raymond Joseph Teller", to the mononym "Teller" and possesses one of the few United States passports issued in a mononymous name.

Some individuals have selected their mononym themselves, when they have been able to do so because of its distinctiveness. Others have come to be known by a mononym that has been applied to them by some segment of the public. Both mechanisms contributed in the case of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has been called, and has publicly called herself, simply "Hillary". Peter Funt, of Candid Camera, wrote in a February 21, 2007, New York Times op-ed piece, "The Mononym Platform": "Someone has apparently decided that Mrs. Clinton will be the first major single-name candidate since 1952, when Ike's P.R. gurus realized that 'Eisenhower' was tough to fit on a bumper sticker.... In an apparent attempt to model her marketing on the likes of Madonna, Aretha and Cher, Mrs. Clinton's site proclaimed: 'Today, Hillary took the first step...'..."

See also

• One-name study
• List of one-word stage names
• Personal names
• Pseudonym
• List of pseudonyms

References

• Encyclopedia Americana, Danville, CT, Grolier, 1986 ed., ISBN 0-7172-0117-1.
• Encyklopedia Polski (Encyclopedia of Poland), Kraków, Wydawnictwo Ryszard Kluszczyński, 1996, ISBN 83-86328-60-6.
• Richard Holmes, "Voltaire's Grin", New York Review of Books, November 30, 1995, pp. 49–55.
• Richard Holmes, Sidetracks: Explorations of a Romantic Biographer, New York, HarperCollins, 2000.
• William Smith (lexicographer), Dictionary of the Bible: Comprising Its Antiquities..., 1860–65.
• Peter Wetzler, Hirohito and War: Imperial Tradition and Military Decision-Making in Prewar Japan, University of Hawaii Press, 1998, ISBN 0824811666.

External links

• Peter Funt, "The Mononym Platform", New York Times, February 21, 2007. [3]
• Penn & Teller FAQ (Internet Archive).