A
mononymous person is an individual who is known by a , 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
The structure of persons' names has varied across time and geography. In some communities, individuals have been mononymous, that is, each person has received only a single name.
Alulim, first king of Sumer, is one of the earliest names known;
Narmer, an
Ancient Egyptian
Pharaoh, is another. Later, Biblical names were typically mononymous, as were names in the surrounding cultures of the fertile crescent. Ancient Greek names also followed the pattern, with second names only used to avoid confusion, as in the case of
Zeno the stoic and
Zeno of Elea.
A notable departure from this custom occurred 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. Post-antiquity most of them are, however, mononymous in most contexts: Cicero, Pompey, Virgil; Euripides, Xenophon, Aristotle, and further afield Boudica and Jugurtha are examples.
During the early middle Ages mononymy slowly declined, with northern and eastern Europe keeping to the tradition longer than the south (possibly highlighted by Edeko, the eastern chieftan whose son ruled Italy as Flavius Odoacer; by the end of the period, however, surnames were commonplace: Edmund Ironside, for example, ruled England while brian Boru was over-king of Ireland, Kenneth McAlpine had already united Scotland and even in Scandinavia surnames were taking hold.
Post-medieval uses
Since the Medieval period, mononyms in the west have almost exclusively been used to identify notable people who already had surnames. these
nicknames were either adopted by the person themselves or conferred by contemporaries.
France
Some French authors have shown a predilection for mononyms. In the 17th century, the dramatist and actor Jean Baptiste Poquelin (1622–73) 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' 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, l[e] j[eune]"; 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 Marie-Henri 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, Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (author of Gigi, 1945), used her authentic surname as her mononymous pen name, "Colette".
Other European countries
The 19th-century Dutch writer
Eduard Douwes Dekker (1820–87), better known by his mononymous pen name
Multatuli (from the
Latin multa tuli, "I have suffered [or
borne] much"), became famous for the satirical novel,
Max Havelaar (1860), in which he denounced the abuses of
colonialism in the
Dutch East Indies (now
Indonesia). In 2002 Multatuli was proclaimed by the Society for Dutch Literature to have been the most important Dutch writer of all time.
The 20th-century British author Hector Hugh Munro became known by his pen name, "Saki".
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).
In the Soviet Union, both Lenin and Stalin are assumed names, for similar reasons. Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov adopted the pen name Lenin while publishing anti-Tsarist propaganda in the 1910s, and was generally known as Lenin (or sometimes V.I. Lenin) after rising to power in the October Revolution. Iosef Besarionis dze Jughashvili assumed the pen name Stalin, from the Russian word for "steel", and was also generally known by this name after the revolution.
A number of visual artists, such as Michelangelo, Titian, Tintoretto and Caravaggio, are commonly known by mononyms. The modern Russian artist Erté formed his mononymous pseudonym from the initials of his actual name, as did the Belgian comics writer Hergé.
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.
Mononymity was represented in photography, from that art's infancy, by Nadar (Gaspard-Félix Tournachon).
North America
The American writer of non-fiction and fiction,
Rodney William Whitaker (1931–2005), is best known for some novels that he wrote under the mononym
pen name, "
Trevanian". The Armenian-Canadian
portrait photographer Yousuf Karsh was commonly known as "Karsh of
Ottawa".
Royalty
Monarchs and other
royalty, for example
Napoleon, have traditionally availed themselves of the
privilege of using a mononym, modified when necessary by an ordinal or descriptor (e.g., Queen
Elizabeth II). 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. 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." In India, the first six
Mughal emperors were known by just one name, adopted by each emperor upon his accession.
Popes have traditionally adopted a single name on their election.
Mononyms in modern times
In Asia
,
Emperor of Japan.]]
In modern times, in countries that have long been part of the
Chinese cultural sphere (Japan,
Korea,
Vietnam and China itself), mononyms are rare. A notable exception pertains to the
Emperor of Japan. Mononyms are, however, common as
stage names in the Japanese
entertainment industry, usually when the performer's legal name is not publicly known; e.g.,
Ayaka,
Becky,
Gackt,
hide,
Hyde,
Mana,
Miyavi,
Tsunku, and
Yui. Also, Japanese baseball superstar
Ichiro Suzuki is widely known in both Japan and North America simply as "Ichiro".
In Hong Kong a few musicians are also known by mononyms, e.g., Janice, Jin, and Justin Lo (who uses the Chinese mononym, "側田"). In Korea, singers such as BoA, Rain and Shoo are known by their mononyms.
A single name remains common usage in India, with revered statesmen such as Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru being referred to as "Bapu" and "Panditji" (honorific titles bestowed on them by the people), respectively. Currently, in India, Mayawati is a prominent politician who has chosen to use only one name. The people of Pakistan popularly refer to the founding father of the country Mohammad Ali Jinnah as Quaid-e-Azam which in Urdu means ("Great Leader"). The people of Bangladesh call Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Bangabandhu because of his contribution to the liberation of their country.
Mononyms are also common in Indonesia, especially on Java, both for members of the ruling class such as Sukarno and Suharto and for commoners such as Rossa.
Single names still also occur in Tibet and Mongolia. Most Afghans have no surname.
In Thailand, people usually address each other in informal situations by nicknames (chue-len or Thai: ชึ่อเล่น "play-name"). Given by parents or relatives in early childhood, these nicknames are typically one syllable (or worn down from two syllables to one). They may often be nonsense words or humorous, and usually have no relation to the person's actual name, although in some cases may be diminutive forms of their first name, like "Nok" for "Noknoi" which means respectively bird and little bird, the first used as nickname and the second being the first name. All Thais have such a name, even the royal family, and they are freely used in everyday life.
Surnames were introduced in Turkey after World War I, as part of his westernizing and modernizing program, by that country's first president, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. His own surname, Atatürk, which was bestowed by the Turkish parliament, means "Father Turk."
In the West
In the West, mononymity, as well as its use by royals in conjunction with titles, has been primarily a privilege of
famous persons such as prominent writers,
artists,
entertainers, musicians and
sportsmen.
Some persons, such as the artist Christo, the sculptor Chryssa, and the singer-songwriter Basia, 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.
Some mononym stage names are merely the performer's actual given name (e.g. Shakira, Madonna, Prince), while others may be the performer's actual surname (e.g. Liberace, Mantovani, Morrissey). Mexican actor Fortino Mario Alfonso Moreno Reyes invented for himself the pseudonym "Cantinflas." French actress Germaine Lefebvre adopted the pseudonym Capucine (French for "nasturtium").
In Lusophone countries such as Portugal, Angola and especially Brazil, football players often adopt a mononym (e.g. Deco, Pelé, Romário, Ronaldo, Adriano, Nani, Eusébio). In Spain, mononyms for football players are also very common; they include nicknames (Michel, Arteaga, Arzú), derivations of the player's surname (Coro, Guti), diminutives (Juanito, Pichi), or the player's first names (Xavi, Sergi, Raúl). Because there are a few very common surnames in Spain (García, Pérez, López, Hernández), the use of mononyms makes it easier to distinguish between the many Garcías and Péreces on each team. Mononyms are occasionally used by players from other countries, for example the Venezuelan Miku and the Ivorian Gervinho.
Similarly the former president of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, is known simply as "Lula", a nickname he officially added to his full name. Such mononyms, which take their origin in given names, surnames or nicknames, are used because Portuguese names tend to be rather long.
In Latin America, it is common for cartoonists to take mononyms—for example, the Argentinians Quino, Tute and Liniers, the Brazilians Angeli, Henfil, Ziraldo and Jaguar, the Chilean Pepo, and the Mexicans Adis, Trino, Magu, Kabeza, Rius, Rictus and Tormentas.
The comedian and illusionist Teller, the silent half of the duo Penn & Teller, has legally changed his original polynym, "Raymond Joseph Teller", to the mononym "Teller" and possesses a United States passport issued in that single 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...'..." Oprah Winfrey, famed American talk show host, is usually referred to by only her first name, Oprah. In Canada, Senator Nancy Ruth had previously dropped her family name of Jackman, using both of her remaining names together as a mononym instead of using "Ruth" as a family name. She is alphabetized under "N," not "R", on the Senate website.
Gallery
See also
List of legally mononymous people
List of one-word stage names
List of pseudonyms
One-name study
Notes
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.
Penn & Teller FAQ (Internet Archive).
Category:Names
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