Mononymous

A mononym is a name composed of only one word. An individual who is known and addressed by a mononym is a mononymous person. In some cases, a mononym selected by an individual may have originally been from a polynym, a word which refers to one of many names for a person or an object. In other cases, it has been determined by the custom of the land or by some interested segment. In the case of historical figures, it may be the only one of the individual's names that has survived and is still known today.

Many Afghans have no surname. It is also common to have no surname in Bhutan, Indonesia, Myanmar, and South India. Javanese names traditionally are mononymic, especially among people of older generations.

Etymology

The word ''mononym'' is a direct loanword from the Greek word ''monṓnymo'' (μονώνυμο), which is a combination of the words ''mónos'' (μόνος, "single"), and ''ónoma'' (ὄνομα, "name").

Antiquity

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.

Ancient Greek names like Heracles, Homer, Socrates, and Aristotle, also follow the pattern, with epithets (similar to second names) only used subsequently by historians to avoid confusion, 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 Roman figures whom today we usually refer to with mononyms include Cicero (Marcus Tullius Cicero) and Terence (Publius Terentius Afer). Roman emperors, such as Augustus, Caligula, and Nero, are also often referred to in English by mononyms.

Mononyms in other ancient cultures include Hannibal, the Celtic queen Boudica and the Numidian king Jugurtha. However, the historical records of some of these figures are scanty or rely completely on the documentation of those outside the person's culture, so it is possible such figures may have had other names within their own cultures that have since been lost to history.

Medieval uses

Europe

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, Trebor.

The Americas

Between Columbus' arrival in the New World and the late 19th century, prominent indigenous peoples in the Americas were mononymous. Examples include Moctezuma (Mexico, 1398–1469), Anacaona (Haiti, 1464–1504), Agüeybaná (Puerto Rico, died 1510), Diriangén (Nicaragua, died 1523), Urracá (Panama, died 1531), Guamá (Cuba, died 1532), Atahualpa (Peru, 1497–1533), Lempira (Honduras, died 1537), Lautaro (Chile, 1534–1557), Tamanaco (Venezuela, died 1573), Pocahontas (United States, 1595–1617), Auoindaon (Canada, fl. 1623), Cangapol (United States, 1768–1813).

Uniquely, the Dutch-Seneca diplomat Cornplanter received both a Seneca-language mononym (Kaintwakon, roughly "corn-planter") from his mother and a given name and surname (John Abeel) from his father, and he used both throughout his life. His later descendants, such as Jesse Cornplanter, used "Cornplanter" as the family name instead of "Abeel".

In the 19th century, most chiefs involved in the Apache Wars had mononym birth names, and some replaced those with mononymous nicknames, such as Geronimo (born Goyaałé), Victorio (born Beduiat), and Cochise.

Post-medieval uses

Since the medieval period, mononyms in the West have almost exclusively been used to identify people who already had surnames. These nicknames were either adopted by the persons themselves or conferred by contemporaries.

France

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 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 of his family surname, "Arouet, l june ("Arouet, the young"); it reversed the syllables of the name of the town, Airvault, where his father came from; 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 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.

In the 20th century, a fourth French writer, Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (author of '' Gigi'', 1945), used her actual surname as her mononym pen name, Colette. Some French actors and singers have used as a stage mononym their given name or surname ( Dalida) or a name of a different origin (Barbara).

Nadar (Gaspard-Félix Tournachon, 1820–1910) was an early French photographer.

The controversial French physician and author Louis-Ferdinand Céline adopted, and was called by, the single name Céline.

Elsewhere in Europe

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 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 r ''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).

The Dutch writer Jan Hendrik Frederik Grönloh (1882–1961) wrote under the pseudonym Nescio (Latin for "I don't know").

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'').

A number of visual artists, such as Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, Caravaggio and Rembrandt, 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 writers Hergé and Jijé.

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.

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 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.

In Japan, the emperor and his family have no surname, only a given name, such as Hirohito, which in practice in Japanese is rarely used: out of respect and as a measure of politeness, Japanese prefer to say "the Emperor" or "the Crown Prince". Following an Emperor's death, but not his retirement, he is renamed according to the era of his reign. In India, the first six Mughal emperors were known by just one name, adopted by each emperor upon his accession.

Roman Catholic popes have traditionally adopted a single, regnal name upon their election (except for John Paul I and II). The mononymous tradition reverted to form with the election and succession of Pope Benedict XVI in 2005 and Pope Francis in 2013.

Modern times

Mononym-normal

The Western practice of combining a given name (given name or forename) with a family name (surname) is not universal.

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. His own surname, Atatürk, which was bestowed by the Turkish parliament, means "Father Turk". Common people can be addressed semi-formally by their given name plus the title Bey or Hanım (without surname), whereas politicians are often known by surname only (Ecevit, Demirel). Many Turkish sportspeople, especially football players, wear jerseys with only their first name (e.g. Çağlar).

Mononyms are also common in Indonesia for Javanese individuals, both prominent government figures such as former presidents Sukarno and Suharto and weightlifter Triyatno

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