How to Create a Powerful Pen Name or Stage Name

Classification … PROSPERITY > #WRITING, #HOWTO, #NONFICTION, #FICTION … (FULL SYSTEM) (REALITY SHIFT)
Overview … Perhaps you’re a writer. Perhaps you’re an actor. Perhaps you’re a musician. Or perhaps you’re in any field at all, and you want people to remember your name, and to respond well to your name. There’s a simple way to do that. It’s been used for decades.

If you introduced yourself at a party as “Jerry Smith,” they’d hear you, understand what your name is … and maybe they’d remember it later.

But if you introduced yourself as “Stenvastenich Korsorchen,” they wouldn’t know what you’d just said, they wouldn’t know what your name was even though you’d just spoken it, and of course they’d not be able to later remember your name, because it never actually got into their head at the time.

As you can see, the two words in the unique name have zero relation to anything in people’s experience. You might as well be speaking in a foreign language. They just cannot duplicate (in their heads) what you said. Though when you use a name like: “Jerry Smith,” “Carol Johnson,” or “Tom Davis,” they’d at least be able to repeat it back.

The difference in this extreme example is that this common set of names contains words they’ve heard before: Jerry, Carol, Tom, Smith, Johnson, and Davis. But they’ve never heard the words “Korsorchen” or “Stenvastenich.”

This means that they can RECOGNIZE words in the common set and they CANNOT RECOGNIZE words in the unusual set.

How can we build upon this difference to create something they’ll hear, and remember later, and that will also trigger a positive feeling?

Of course, an aspiring actress named Carol Johnson will be understood, but will that common-sounding name be remembered? Or a guitarist named Tom Davis. Will that name be remembered?

Someone might remember the actress’s looks or the musician’s solo, but will they remember the person’s name?

Just as you’ll find it difficult to easily remember a specific toothpick in a hamburger you ate ten years ago, it would be easy to feel vague about the actress’s name or the guitarist’s name. Because you’ve seen a million toothpicks, and you’ve met thousands of Carols and Toms.

But do you remember the name of the singer Madonna? Do you remember the name of the guitarist/singer Prince?

Of course, you do.

What about Rock Hudson, Holly Hunter, Summer Phoenix, Lady Gaga, Slim Pickins, Tiger Woods, Jack Black, Bill Gates, Amber Heard, Mark Cuban, Florence Nightingale, Mark Twain, Will Smith, Paris Hilton, Brad Pitt, and Angelina Jolie (“angel” and “pretty” in French)?

These names have a natural advantage to being remembered.

Do you see what it is?

In the last example above, each of the names is a pre-existing English word which has a meaning in the English language. “Rock” is a stone. “Hudson” is a river. “Holly” is an evergreen shrub with dark green leaves. “Hunter” is one searching for dinner in the forest.

And this means that the name has two advantages to being memorable —

1. It’s a word that people have heard before, so they know it

2. And it also has a “meaning,” already living inside their heads

So such a name won’t baffle or confuse them, and it hooks into a preexisting slot in their universe. Such a name is inherently more memorable than common names which don’t double as vocabulary words.

And there is also a third factor to consider …

I wouldn’t want to be Badger Oldfeet. Would you?

I wouldn’t want to meet Slippery Shadows. Would you?

I might enjoy meeting Red Archer, Summer Nevada, or Madison Storm. Wouldn’t you?

As you see, the “quality” of the name is the automatic response it evokes from the subconscious mind when you hear it. So you wouldn’t want to harness your star to the quality of “Oldfeet,” “Shade,” “Crook,” “Loon,” “Bane,” “Grim,” or “Blight.” Nor to “Viper,” “Fang,” “Ash,” “Ruse,” “Smudge,” or “Lost.”

In a similar vein, the names of very famous people can be reused, if they trigger a favorable feeling.

So you’d avoid: “Stalin,” “Hussein,” “Atilla,” “Hitler,” or “Capone.”

But you could employ: “Plato,” “Rumi,” “Arthur,” “Merlin,” “Rama,” “Beowulf,” “Einstein,” “Columbus,” “Tesla,” “Ishmael,” “Noah,” “Abraham,” “Moses,” “Solomon,” the Archangels “Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael,” “Caesar,” “Hannibal,” “Saladin,” “Khan,” “Newton,” “Darwin,” “Homer,” or “Dante.”

You’d avoid “Cain” and “Judas,” but what about “Goliath” or “Delilah?”

You’d avoid “Sodom,” “Sheol,” “Hades,” “Siberia,” “Alcatraz,” and “Mordor.”

You could use “Valhalla,” “Shambala,” “Xanadu,” “Eden,” “Tuscany,” “Provance,” “Riviera,” or “Heaven,” as well as cities with an appropriate or exotic flavor, such as “Morocco,” “Cairo,” “Venice,” “London,” “Paris,” “Phoenix,” “Denver,” “Vegas,” “Dallas,” “Houston,” “Chicago,” “Miami,” “Atlanta,” “Laredo,” and “Reno.”

So far we have:

1. Names that people recognize and could spell (familiar words)

2. Words that have a meaning in the English language or in our Culture (such as names from history or myth and place names)

3. Which have an appropriate or positive “flavor” or connotation

And of course, instead of using TWO English-meaning words in your name, you could use just ONE English-meaning word in a name, like Doris Day, Johnny Cash, Bing Crosby, Cary Grant, Clark Gable, Judy Garland, Grace Kelly, Tom Cruise, Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman, Matt Damon, Scarlett Johnasson, Christian Bale, Gates McFadden, Joaquin Phoenix, Russell Crowe, Sandra Bullock, Emma Stone, Emily Blunt, Daniel Craig, Adam Driver, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Bob Dylan, Freddie Mercury, David Bowie, Whitney Houston, Tony Orlando, Bob Denver, Lucille Ball, Betty White, Bob Hope, Tina Fey, Pedro Pascal, Robin Williams, Chris Rock, Steve Martin, Martin Luthor King Jr., or Steve Jobs.

Angel Ashe, Felicity Storm, Danny Morocco, Trevor Thorson, Brady Tomorrow, Sinclair Port, Severin Steele, Marcus Delphi, Zephyr Donahue, Janus McEvers, Cara O’Leary, Lilah Eden, Mercury Stevens, Zano Thrush, Honey Ishtar, Timothy Finch, Bear Walters, Fairchild Evers, Badger Brown, Salty O’Brian, Clifton Far, Monica Gates, Allan Lazuli, Laura Sands … you can do this all day.

I’ve used many “over the top” examples in this article, and that’s done to maximize clarity for YOU. In your own persona-creation, you’ll need to be “out there” enough to be slightly unusual, but only just enough to be accepted by your audience.

I used these same principles to create the stage name Traktor Topaz, that I used for many years, and it’s rather “out there,” but it served me well in that field, because at first I was providing dinner music to restaurants and my brochure showed me in a tux, restraining the image. Then later, I was manufacturing an unusual musical instrument, and selling to musicians all over the world, so the name could hardly be too extreme for that audience! Standing out was the priority. And it worked great!

Names originally come from nouns in nature, and like slow geology within the Earth and ephemeral creatures upon the Earth, language is a mutating creature, and nouns are the symbols for objects. And nouns become names of times, places, and persons.

So we are, in effect, reverse-engineering this process with the intentional choice to create a name—for ourself, our project, our career—a name that will increase the odds of success within our chosen field. We are social-engineering a symbol, a noun, a name.

As a child I was taught that Native American peoples often chose some natural thing to be the name of a child, so we have stereotypical names like Running Bear and Little White Dove. And in Scandinavian countries, many names show lineage, such as Stevenson (Steven’s son) and Olafsdotter (Olaf’s daughter).

But among the things that people can be named for, there is, for example, geography: river, creek, shallow crossings (a ford), constructed crossings (a bridge), brooks, marshes, dams, lakes and bays. Then forests and woods and groves. (So, River Phoenix, John Ford, Mel Brooks, Reginald Marsh.)

Then there are places people live: homes (Old English ham), towns (Old English ton), and cities. (So George Washington, John Milton, Hillary Clinton.)

Then there are occupations: farmer, shepherd, carter (cart-driver), hayward (keeper of hedges/fences), thatcher (roofer), gardener, forester, parker (park keeper), fletcher (arrow-maker), fisher, cooper (barrel-maker), sawyer (wood-cutter), turner (lathe-worker), smith, goldsmith, wright (craftsman), mason, tanner, skinner, dyer, weaver, tailor, draper (cloth merchant), merchant, chandler (candle maker), cutler (knife maker), potter, plumber, baker, cook, brewer, butler, miller, porter, barber, archer, squire, page, marshall, knight, ward (a guard), king, lord, noble, bishop, abbot, priest, dean, clark (clerk or cleric), monk, bailey (a bailiff), steward, sheriff, chamberlain, spencer (steward of provisions), piper, singer, miner, and these comprise many, many people names.

Then we have adjectives: short, dark, fair, small, longfellow, hardy, big (biggs), hair-color (black, brown, gray, white, red, and ginger), and words of temperament: stern, wise, goodman, merry, merriman, meeks, swift, sage, stark, fairchild, and goodwin (good friend).

And names after other creatures, like wolf, fox, hawk (hawkins), crow, raven, falcon (and falconer or falkner), crane, bear, hart (a stag), stag, buck, hog, kidd (young goat), finch, sparrow, robin, jay, nightingale, starling, swan, drake, mallard, heron, gosling, bullock, drake (Old English dragon), griffin and phoenix (mythical creatures). Plant names such as Oak (Oakes, Oakley), Ash, Beech, Holly, Laurel, Alder, Hazel, Hawthorn, moss, reed, blossom, bloom, rose, lily, iris, and violet.

So language evolved, nouns grew, people got named—something to remember them and refer to them specifically—and these names mutated, as does the living language.

So we have these memorable-name folks in our shared history …

Garth Brooks, Gerald Ford, Jeff Bridges, Veronica Lake, Natalie Wood, Forest Whitaker, Isaac Newton, Clint Eastwood, Charlie Parker, Maggie Smith, Elizabeth Taylor, James Mason, Anderson Cooper, Tom Sawyer, Sigourney Weaver, Tina Turner, Beatrix Potter, Josephine Baker, Thurgood Marshall, Gladys Knight, Stephen King, James Dean, Pearl Bailey, Patrick Stewart, Neville Chamberlain, Martin Short, James Brown, Betty White, Zane Grey, Red Skelton, Ginger Rogers, Howard Stern, Morgan Fairchild, Virginia Woolf, Wolf Blitzer, Wolfman Jack, Howlin Wolf, Michael J. Fox, Russell Crowe, Buck Owens, Captain Kidd, Captain Jack Sparrow, Ryan Gosling, Sandra Bullock, Annie Oakley, Stan Laurel, Lou Reed, Kate Moss, Blossom Dearie, Orlando Bloom, Axl Rose, Lily Tomlin, Lightnin’ Hopkins, and Nathaniel Hawthorne.

By now, it may begin to seem reasonable that, although these people had talent, drive, and skills, one of the reasons they were more easily remembered was because their names were easy to understand and also hooked into a pre-existing mental slot because of the English-language symbol built into the name, and due of this name-construction method, some names stand out better, so as to be more memorable.

You already know the field in which you wish to become well known. And that means you know the audience for what you provide. And that means you can estimate about how much you wish to stand out. Too much, and perhaps like the singer Screamin’ Jay Hawkins, or the action-novelist Brad Thor, maybe some folks won’t take you seriously enough. But too little, and maybe you don’t stand out enough to be remembered.

So how to, so to speak, adjust the volume of your pen name?

Here’s an idea:

First, the format of your name. In general, people who use the format James J. Jones can be perceived as pompous, compared to the format James Jones. You’ll notice that moviegoers often preferred the shorter format, with Bing Crosby, Bob Hope, Mae West, Tom Mix, Roy Rogers. These names seem more dynamic, and this seems to be the most powerful format for clarity and impact.

Next, we’re choosing words that contain words with meaning in the English language. These nouns are often concrete pictures like hill, plant, animal, town. Sometimes they’re not a physical object but a quality, like short, stern, color, or an activity like a vocation: driver, weaver, tailor, miller. So the object-nouns and the quality-nouns and the activity-nouns, for discussion let’s just call them all verbal symbols for a thing.

Of course, in some contexts, being viewed as stable and reliable might be more important to your audience than increasing the standing-out quality with these hooked-in symbols.

Repeating Sounds: I also like to use assonance in names, both business and personal names, with a repeating sound in the name, if possible. For example—Lightning Labs, Traktor Topaz, Mobius Megatar—I’ve used all three of these. If assonance fits, it’s yet another memory-trigger because the repeated sound itself becomes memorable.

1. Clarity: People can recognize the words and probably spell them

2. Name contains pre-existing English word with a dictionary meaning

3. A desirable quality or “flavor” in the subconscious reaction to the name

4. Pre-existing meaning from people, places, occupations, things, and times

5. Adjust the volume, how much it stands out

6. Assonance or repeating sounds, if appropriate

7. A Promise: it should “infer” what you get

And how to go about doing all of this has been mapped out in this article. :)

If you do, for gosh sakes, make it easy for people to remember your name.

You will also be creating a persona that serves as a target and a focus for your efforts for years to come. :)

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