Cover not available
Article published In:
Internet Pragmatics
Vol. 3:1 (2020) ► pp.95–115

Constructing authorial pseudonyms and authorial identity in online fanfiction communities

| University of Manchester
This article undertakes the first linguistic analysis of the innovative online pseudonyms (e.g., <smollouisandtolharry>, <00Q007Narry>, <b0yfriendsinl0ve>) used by fanfiction authors. Specifically, this research explores the most frequent lexical formation processes employed when creating pseudonyms, why these processes are used, and what they reveal about authorial identity in fanfiction communities. The most common formation methods identified across the 600 names analysed are com-​pounding, blending, and variant spellings. All three of these processes allow authors to create memorable and unique names which distinguish their work from that of other writers in their community. Indeed, despite their use of pseudonyms, these authors are still highlighting their individual authorial identities, and they do this by turning the process of creating a pseudonym into a ludic experiment in linguistic innovation. Consequently, future studies should further explore the relationship between self-selected names and the articulation of identity.
Keywords: identity, pseudonyms, fanfiction, onomastics, word formation, lexis, online communities
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Lexical formation
    • 3.2Data collection and coding
    • 3.3Data analysis
  • 4.Quantitative findings
  • 5.Discussion
    • 5.1Compounding
    • 5.2Blending
    • 5.3Variant spellings
    • 5.4Summary
  • 6.Limitations and strengths
  • 7.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 13 December 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ip.00040.don
References (62)
References
Aleksiejuk, Katarzyna. 2016. “Pseudonyms.” In The Oxford Handbook of Names and Naming, ed. by Carole Hough, 438–452. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Alley, Henry. 1997. The Quest for Anonymity: The Novels of George Eliot. London: Associated University Presses.Google Scholar
Anderson, Leon. 2006. “Analytic autoethnography.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 35(4): 373–395. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Archive of Our Own [Ao3]. 2019. “Archive FAQ > pseuds.” [URL] (accessed 24 February 2019).
Bauer, Laurie. 1983. English Word-Formation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bechar-Israeli, Haya. 1995. “From <Bonehead> to <cLoNehEAd>: Nicknames, play, and identity on internet relay chat.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 1(2). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Brill, Rebecca. 2015. “Exploring collective storytelling, sexuality, and diversification in slash fanfiction.” Undergraduate Honors Thesis, Ball State University.Google Scholar
Brooker, Will. 2002. Using the Force: Creativity, Community, and Star Wars Fans. New York: Continuum. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Burgess, Janita. 2018. “AO3 celebrates 30,000 fandoms!” [URL] (accessed 24 February 2019).
Carissimo, Justin, and Jess Denham. 2016. “Liam Payne signs solo record deal amid One Direction split fears.” [URL] (accessed 24 February 2019).
Carty, T.  J. 1995. A Dictionary of Literary Pseudonyms in the English Language. London: Mansell.Google Scholar
Chang, Heewon. 2008. Autoethnography as Method. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar
Coppa, Francesca. 2014. “Pop culture, fans, and social media.” In The Social Media Handbook, ed. by Jeremy Hunsinger, and Theresa M. Senft, 76–92. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Cushing, William. 1963. Initials and Pseudonyms: A Dictionary of Literary Disguises. Waltham, MA: Mark Press.Google Scholar
Dare-Edwards, Helena Louise. 2014. “‘Shipping bullshit’: Twitter rumours, fan/celebrity interaction and questions of authenticity.” Celebrity Studies 5(4): 521–524. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Dokulil, Miloš. 1962. Tvoření Slov v Češtine I: Teorie Odvozování Slov [Word Formation in Czech I: Word Theory]. Prague: Nakladatelství ČAV.Google Scholar
Donlan, Lisa. 2017. “From <mrsniall-horan-until-the-end> to <keepingupwith1d>: Online usernames and identity in the One Direction fandom.” Journal of Fandom Studies 5(3): 285–300. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Easley, Alexis. 1996. “Authorship, gender and identity: George Eliot in the 1850s.” Women’s Writing 3(2): 145–160. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Eleá, Ilana. 2012. “Fanfiction and webnovelas: The digital reading and writing of Brazilian adolescent girls.” In The Handbook of Gender, Sex, and Media, ed. by Karen Ross, 71–87. Chichester: Wiley Blackwell. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ellis, Carolyn, Tony E. Adams, and Arthur P. Bochner. 2011. “Autoethnography: An overview.” Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung 36(4): 273–290. [URL]
Ezell, Margaret J. M. 1994. “Reading pseudonyms in seventeenth-century English coterie literature.” Essays in Literature 21(1): 14–25.Google Scholar
Fandrych, Ingrid Mina. 2004. “Non-morphematic word-formation processes: A multi-level approach to acronyms, blends, clippings and onomatopoeia.” PhD dissertation, University of the Free State.Google Scholar
Fanlore. 2019a. “Larrie.” [URL] (accessed 24 February 2019).
. 2019b. “Anti-larrie.” [URL] (accessed 24 February 2019).
Fazekas, Angela. 2014. “Queer and unusual space: White supremacy in slash fanfiction.” MA Thesis, Queen’s University.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1998. “What is an author?” In Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology: Essential Works of Foucault 1954–1984, Vol. 21, ed. by James D. Faubion and trans. by Robert Hurley, and Josué V. Harari, 205–222. New York: The New York Press.Google Scholar
Gans, Herbert J. 1999. “Participant observation in the era of ‘ethnography’.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 28(5): 540–548. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grace, Abbie, Nenagh Kemp, Frances H. Martin, and Rauno Parrila. 2015. “Undergraduates’ attitudes to text messaging language use and intrusions of textisms into formal writing.” New Media & Society 17(5): 792–809. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grossman, Lev. 2013. “50 best websites 2013.” [URL] (accessed 24 February 2019).
Halkett, Samuel, and John Laing. 1882–1888. A Dictionary of the Anonymous and Pseudonymous: Literature of Great Britain: Including the Works of Foreigners Written in, or Translated into the English Language. Edinburgh: W. Paterson.Google Scholar
Hamst, Olphar. 1971. Handbook of Fictitious Names: Being a Guide to Authors, Chiefly in the Lighter Literature of the XIXth Century, Who Have Written Under Assumed Names, and to Literary Forgers, Impostors, Plagiarists, and Imitators. Chicheley: Minet.Google Scholar
Hassa, Samira. 2012. “Projecting, exposing, revealing self in the digital world: Usernames as a social practice in a Moroccan chatroom.” Names: A Journal of Onomastics 60(4): 201–209. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Jenkins, Henry. 1992. Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
. 2006. Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Judd, Catherine A. 1995. “Male pseudonyms and female authority.” In Literature in the Marketplace: Nineteenth-Century British Publishing and Reading Practices, ed. by John O. Jordan, and Robert L. Patten, 250–268. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kawulich, Barbara B. 2005. “Participant observation as a data collection method.” Forum: Qualitative Social Research 6(2). [URL] (accessed 22 March 2019).
Larsen, Katherine, and Lynn S. Zubernis. 2013. Fangasm: Supernatural Fangirls. Iowa City, Iowa: University of Iowa Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Leppänen, Sirpa. 2008. “Cybergirls in trouble? Fan fiction as a discursive space for interrogating gender and sexuality.” In Identity Trouble: Critical Discourse and Contested Identities, ed. by Carmen Rosa Caldas-Coulthard, and Rick Iedema, 156–179. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2009. “Playing with and policing language use and textuality in fan fiction.” In Internet Fictions, ed. by Ingrid Hotz-Davies, Anton Kirchhofer, and Sirpa Leppänen, 62–83. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Google Scholar
Lindholm, Loukia. 2013. “The maxims of online nicknames.” In Pragmatics of Computer-Mediated Communication. ed. by Susan Herring, Dieter Stein, and Tuija Virtanen, 437–462. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Marshall, Alice Kahler. 1985. Pen Names of Women Writers. Camp Hill, PA: Alice Marshall Collection.Google Scholar
Mazar, Rochelle. 2006. “Slash fiction/fanfiction.” In The International Handbook of Virtual Learning Environments, Vol. 11, ed. by Joel Weiss, Jason Nolan, Jeremy Hunsinger, and Peter Trifonas, 1141–1150. Dordrecht: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Mendelsohn, Kaya. 2014. “Gender in fandom.” Applied Psychology OPUS. [URL]
Mentxaka, Aintzane Legarreta. 2007. “Fanfic in Ireland.” In Irish Postmodernisms and Popular Culture, ed. by Wanda Balzano, Anne Mulhall, and Moynagh Sullivan, 74–84. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Noble, William Stafford. 2009. “How does multiple testing correction work?” Nature Biotechnology 27(12): 1135–1137. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Nuessel, Frank. 2014. “A note on the names of selected magicians.” Names: A Journal of Onomastics 63(1): 44–54. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Pearson, Jacqueline. 1988. The Prostituted Muse: Images of Women & Women Dramatists, 1642–1737. New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf.Google Scholar
Penley, Constance. 1992. “Feminism, psychoanalysis, and the study of popular culture.” In Cultural Studies, ed. by Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson, and Paul A. Treichler, 479–511. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Room, Adrian. 2010. Dictionary of Pseudonyms: 13,000 Assumed Names and Their Origins (5th edn.). Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co.Google Scholar
Spradley, James P. 1980. Participant Observation. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
Stefanescu, Catalina, Vance W. Berger, and Scott Hershberger. 2005. “Yates’ correction.” In Encyclopedia of Statistics in Behavioral Science, ed. by Brian S. Everitt, and David C. Howell, 2127–2129. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons. DOI logo
Štekauer, Pavol. 1998. An Onomasiological Theory of English Word-Formation. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 1999. “Fundamental principles of an onomasiological theory of word-formation in English.” Brno Studies in English 25(1): 75–98. [URL]
. 2005. “Onomasiological approach to word-formation.” In Handbook of Word-Formation, ed. by Pavol Štekauer, and Rochelle Lieber, 207–232. Dordrecht: Springer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
. 2016. “Compounding from an onomasiological perspective.” In The Semantics of Compounding, ed. by Pius ten Hacken, 38–53. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Stommel, Wyke. 2007. “Mein nick bin ich! Nicknames in a German forum on eating disorders.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13(1): 141–162. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Thurlow, Crispin, and Michele Poff. 2013. “Text messaging.” In Pragmatics of Computer-Mediated Communication, ed. by Susan Herring, Dieter Stein, and Tuija Virtanen, 163–190. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Todd, Breanna M., and Catherine A. Armstrong Soule. 2018. “Fans and brands: Delineating between fandoms, brand communities, and brand publics.” In Exploring the Rise of Fandom in Contemporary Consumer Culture, ed. by Cheng Lu Wang, 18–34. Hershey, Pennsylvania: IGI Global. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Tushnet, Rebecca. 2014. “The yes men and the women men don’t see.” In A World Without Privacy: What Law Can and Should Do, ed. by Austin Sarat, 83–130. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Urbaniak, Geoffrey C., and Scott Plous. 2017. “Research randomizer.” [URL] (accessed 24 February 2019).
Val Mora (valmora). 2012. “To unspool the secrets of our selves.” [URL] (accessed 24 February 2019).
Zgusta, Ladislav. 1990. “Onomasiological change: Sachen-change reflected by Wörter.” In Research Guide on Language Change, ed. by Edgar C. Polomé, 389–398. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. DOI logoGoogle Scholar