Using a pen name
A pen name is defined concisely by Merriam-Webster as “an author's pseudonym”, and more wordily by the Collins as “the name that [a writer] uses on books and articles instead of his or her real name.”
I can think of plenty of reasons that writers might use a pen name, with some of the most common being:
A desire to separate themselves from other existing works. A writer who is already known for a specific genre or piece of work might decide that adopting a new name would allow them the freedom to explore a new project with fewer expectations from their existing audience.
Work-life boundaries. A writer’s work might be very separate from how they work and what they work on in their everyday life - very few writers are, after all, making an income from their writing alone. A report from Horizon Research in 2016 found that writers earned an average of 24% of their personal income, or around NZD$13,500 per annum, from their writing. Some might find it helpful to have a writing persona that is distinct from who they are in other areas of their life.
Barriers to using their real name. This has historically been a common reason for pen names among female writers who either struggled to be published due to gender bias or who are publishing in a genre typically dominated by male writers.
A desire for anonymity. Some writers might prefer that their boss at their day job or their friends and family don’t connect them to their published works.
The name is taken. A writer who has a common name or who shares a name with another established writer might take on a pen name in order to stand out on their own.
My pen name is Atareria. It was my mother’s mother’s mother’s name - my great-grandmother, and the last wahine | woman in my family to carry an ingoa Māori | Māori name as her first name.
I have never used an ingoa Māori before, and using a tupuna | ancestor name for my writing felt right. I’m not sure why. I’m not sure I even need to understand why it felt important.
As an aside, I wouldn’t consider “Atareria“ to be a pseudonym. It’s pedantic, but I believe that the whakapapa | etymology of a word has distinct connotations that affect the meaning imbued in it. In this case, pseudonym comes from the Greek word pseudōnymos, which means "bearing a false name.” I don’t consider Atareria to be a false name - it is the right name, despite not being my legal one. It’s just another noun that happens to mean me.
My legal given name is the one I use in my career and personal life and I don’t plan on changing it. I also don’t intend for my pen name to be a way of keeping my identity a secret. I also don’t see my pen name as a persona separate from my day-to-day life. I feel able to exist as multiple things at once.
The best reason I can articulate for why I use separate names is that my writing is toi Māori | Māori art. It can’t be anything else. I can’t be not Māori.
And so I want my work to be identifiable as being from a Māori writer.
Noho ora mai | Be well