Why I Use a Pen Name
Hi, my name is…
Hi, my name is Elle. Except legally, it’s not. Elle is (phonetically) my first initial and it means, simply, “she” in French, a language I studied and love. As for Rogers, that name is a combination of both my maiden and married names.
It’s like an encrypted cipher key, no?
So this is my confession. That sounds quite dramatic, but the truth is, I have been feeling a certain amount of angst lately about the fact that I’ve gotten to know so many wonderful people here on Medium and I haven’t been upfront about the fact that I don’t write under my legal name.
It feels like a lie of omission, but I should temper that statement by acknowledging that I generally suffer from an excess of guilt over things I don’t necessarily need to feel guilty for.
I know that there are many people here on Medium who use pen names and may or may not let their readers in on that part of their writing life. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that. There are also people who use obvious pen names, and there are many more who use their legal names (or variations thereof).
There are as many reasons for using (or not using) pen names as there are writers who do or do not use them.
