Antiquity Narmer The structure of persons' names has varied across time and geography. In some
societies, individuals have been mononymous, receiving only a single name.
Alulim, first king of
Sumer, is one of the earliest names known;
Narmer, an
ancient Egyptian
pharaoh, is another. In addition, Biblical names like
Adam,
Eve,
Moses, or
Abraham, were typically mononymous, as were names in the surrounding cultures of the
Fertile Crescent. , Greek philosopher
Ancient Greek names like
Heracles,
Homer,
Plato,
Socrates, and
Aristotle, also follow the pattern, with
epithets (similar to second names) only used subsequently by historians to distinguish between individuals with the same name, as in the case of
Zeno the Stoic and
Zeno of Elea; likewise,
patronymics or other biographic details (such as
city of origin, or another place name or occupation the individual was associated with) were used to specify whom one was talking about, but these details were not considered part of the name. A departure from this custom occurred, for example, among the
Romans, who by the
Republican period and throughout the
Imperial period
used multiple names: a male citizen's name comprised three parts (this was mostly typical of the upper class, while others would usually have only two names):
praenomen (given name),
nomen (clan name) and
cognomen (family line within the clan) – the
nomen and
cognomen were almost always hereditary. Famous ancient Romans who today are usually referred to by mononym include
Cicero (Marcus Tullius Cicero) and
Terence (Publius Terentius Afer).
Roman emperors, for example
Augustus,
Caligula, and
Nero, are also often referred to in English by mononym. Mononyms in other ancient cultures include
Hannibal, the
Celtic queen
Boudica, and the
Numidian king
Jugurtha.
Medieval era During the
early Middle Ages, mononymity slowly declined, with northern and eastern
Europe keeping the tradition longer than the south. The
Dutch Renaissance scholar and theologian
Erasmus is a late example of mononymity; though sometimes referred to as "Desiderius Erasmus" or "Erasmus of Rotterdam", he was christened only as "Erasmus", after the
martyr Erasmus of Formiae. Composers in the and styles of late
medieval music were often known mononymously—potentially because their names were
sobriquets—such as
Borlet,
Egardus,
Egidius,
Grimace,
Solage, and
Trebor.
Modern era Some French authors have shown a preference for mononyms. In the 17th century, the dramatist and actor Jean-Baptiste Poquelin (1622–73) took the mononym stage name
Molière. In the 18th century, François-Marie Arouet (1694–1778) adopted the mononym
Voltaire, for both literary and personal use, in 1718 after his imprisonment in Paris'
Bastille, to mark a break with his past. The new name combined several features. It was an
anagram for a
Latinized version (where "u" become "v", and "j" becomes "i") of his family
surname, "Arouet, l[e] j[eune]" ("Arouet, the young"); it reversed the syllables of the name of the town his father came from,
Airvault; and it has implications of speed and daring through similarity to French expressions such as
voltige,
volte-face and
volatile. "Arouet" would not have served the purpose, given that name's associations with "
roué" and with an expression that meant "for thrashing". The 19th-century French author
Marie-Henri Beyle (1783–1842) 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 admired.
Nadar (Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, 1820–1910) was an early French photographer. In the 20th century,
Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (1873–1954, author of
Gigi, 1945), used her actual surname as her mononym pen name, Colette. In the 17th and 18th centuries, most Italian castrato singers used mononyms as stage names (e.g.
Caffarelli,
Farinelli). The German writer, mining engineer, and philosopher Georg Friedrich Philipp Freiherr von Hardenberg (1772–1801) became famous as
Novalis. The 18th-century 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. 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] many things"), became famous for the satirical novel,
Max Havelaar (1860), in which he denounced the abuses of
colonialism in the
Dutch East Indies (now
Indonesia). Surnames were introduced in
Turkey only after
World War I, by the country's first president,
Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, as part of his Westernization and modernization programs. The 20th-century British author
Hector Hugh Munro (1870–1916) 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 (1885–1939) after 1925 often used the mononymous pseudonym Witkacy, a
conflation of his surname (
Witkiewicz) and
middle name (
Ignacy). The Syrian poet Ali Ahmad Said Esber (born 1930) at age 17 adopted the mononym pseudonym,
Adunis, sometimes also spelled "Adonis". A perennial contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature, he has been described as the greatest living poet of the Arab world.
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
epithet (e.g., Queen
Elizabeth II or
Charles the Great). This is not always the case: King
Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden has two names. 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
surnames.
Roman Catholic popes have traditionally adopted a single,
regnal name upon their
election.
John Paul I broke with this tradition – adopting a double name honoring his two predecessors – and his successor
John Paul II followed suit, but
Benedict XVI reverted to the use of a single name. ==Elsewhere==