Q: I recently read a review of A Death in Summer, the latest
Benjamin Black mystery. The writer referred to “Benjamin Black”
as the nom de plume of the Booker Prize-winning author John
Banville. I think it’s silly to use a French term here when we
have a perfectly fine English one, “pen name.” Your thoughts
please? A: We prefer “pen name” too, but nom de plume isn’t
French. It’s as English as Big Ben, the Tower of London, and
fish and chips. In Origins of the Specious, our book about
language myths, we discuss the unusual birth of this faux French
expression. The real French term for an assumed name is nom de
guerre, which the British adopted in the late 17th century. But
in the 19th century, British writers apparently thought the
original French might be confusing. One can see why nom de
guerre, literally “war name,” could puzzle readers. The French
initially used it for the fictitious name that a soldier often
assumed on enlisting, but by the time the British started using
the expression, it could mean any