How to Use pen name in a Sentence

pen name

noun
  • This is the reason that a lot of us choose to write under pen names.
    — Jason Parham, WIRED, 13 Sep. 2023
  • Twain, who was born Samuel Langhorne Clemens, even took his pen name from the job.
    — René Ostberg, Encyclopedia Britannica, 7 May 2026
  • Most were rejected, but a few were published, under a pen name.
    — Clay Risen, New York Times, 25 Jan. 2024
  • Drew Cloud’ was a pen name that represented a group of us writing these posts.
    — Adam Harris, The Atlantic, 26 Apr. 2018
  • Myrtle’s pen name was Olive Green for cookbooks and best-sellers.
    — Brenda Yenke, cleveland, 5 May 2022
  • His third and current pen name is evidence of him fulfilling that debt to himself.
    — Elise Brisco, Rolling Stone, 22 Aug. 2025
  • Shiki took his pen name from the cuckoo, whose song is said to resemble the sound of someone coughing up blood.
    — Christopher Benfey, The New York Review of Books, 25 June 2020
  • Fomin, a 40-year-old whose pen name was Vladlen Tatarsky, was born in eastern Ukraine.
    — Robyn Dixon, Washington Post, 3 Apr. 2023
  • Mr Kinkonda, who goes by his pen name of Chéri Chérin, seems as worn down as the surroundings.
    — The Economist, 14 Sep. 2017
  • Hank Early is the pen name of author John Mantooth, listed above.
    — Kelly Kazek | [email protected], al, 5 Oct. 2020
  • Hooks wrote under the pen name bell hooks after her great-grandmother Bell Blair Hooks.
    — Michelle Garcia, NBC News, 15 Dec. 2021
  • William Bowery—a pen name that is all but confirmed to be Joe Alwyn—is a cowriter on this track.
    — Ana Escalante, Glamour, 21 Oct. 2022
  • The show is based on a series of books written by vet Alf Wight under the pen name of James Herriot.
    — Manori Ravindran, Variety, 8 Jan. 2022
  • Writers who used to hide their masculinist impulses behind a pen name now write and say outrageous things under their real name.
    — Helen Lewis, The Atlantic, 14 May 2026
  • Valen, the pen name of Jerry Peterson, writes the John Santana series.
    — Mary Ann Grossmann, Twin Cities, 1 Sep. 2019
  • His poems, written under the pen name K Za Win, were full of a vigor that belied his monastic background.
    — New York Times, 25 May 2021
  • Mark Hamilton is his pen name, and his real name is Wallace Ward, who is 64 and lives in Nevada.
    — Dallas News, 2 Mar. 2023
  • The movie is based on a book by the same title by a popular Italian author whose pen name is Felicia Kingsley.
    — Nick Vivarelli, Variety, 15 July 2024
  • The artists tend to be reluctant influencers; many use pen names, and almost all prefer to use illustrations to depict themselves publicly.
    — Matt Alt, New Yorker, 25 Aug. 2025
  • His father, Jonathan, was a writer who used Finn as a pen name and then legally changed the family name to Finn when David was in high school.
    — Glenn Rifkin, New York Times, 19 Oct. 2021
  • Yale class of ‘99—and the writer of eight romance novels, all published under the pen name Selena Montgomery.
    — Elizabeth Kiefer, Glamour, 27 Apr. 2018
  • Many 18th- and 19th-century authors wrote under pseudonyms (pen names).
    — Encyclopedia Britannica, 27 Apr. 2026
  • The twist is that, as the podcast's title suggests, the series was written by Morton’s father, who goes by the pen name Rocky Flintstone.
    — Brianna Wellen, Chicago Reader, 6 Mar. 2018
  • And Kendall’s Grace is prolific, with 171 novels listed on Amazon’s Goodreads site for that pen name alone.
    — Kate Bradshaw, The Mercury News, 17 July 2024
  • Baggott, who also writes under two pen names, is a bestselling novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet who has written more than 20 books.
    — Borys Kit, HollywoodReporter, 9 Feb. 2026
  • Then, text appears, responding to Lubelfeld’s question as if its writer is Samuel Clemens, better known by his pen name Mark Twain.
    — Joseph States, Chicago Tribune, 12 Aug. 2025
  • Zhang Ping, better known by his pen name, Chang Ping, was one of China’s most famous journalists in the 2000s.
    — Li Yuan, New York Times, 4 June 2024
  • The book chronicles the relationship between the Huckleberry Finn author (whose real name was Samuel Clemens) and his famed pen name.
    — Carly Tagen-Dye, PEOPLE, 30 Jan. 2026
  • Despite the nearly identical nature of her pen name and the name of the conversion therapist, the author said similarities between the two were purely coincidental.
    — Quispe López, Them., 30 Oct. 2025
  • The Long Walk, even by Stephen King standards, is quite old, written in 1979 under King’s pen name at the time, Richard Bachman.
    — Paul Tassi, Forbes.com, 13 Sep. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'pen name.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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