What makes a perfect pen name?

Having a name like Dirda, one naturally thinks, at least occasionally, of adopting a pen name. In my riotous youth, I would sometimes refer to myself as the raffish Raoul Schpitzenberg. In college my friends—knowing of my interest in literature and having trouble with Dirda—took to calling me Dryden. My wife still occasionally uses the nickname. Back in the day when I produced a monthly Readings column for The Washington Post Book World I often imagined a character, much like myself, burdened with the moniker Nathan Madrid. The allusion, of course, was partly to Nathan Detroit of Damon Runyon’s “Guys and Dolls”; but reverse Madrid and you do get Dirda M.

At one point I thought I might write mystery stories and figured that my first and middle names would look good on a paperback cover: The Cozy Noir Caper, by Michael Damian. (I believe there is now a pop musician with this name.) Michael and its variants enjoy a good pedigree in crime circles: Mike Hammer, Mickey Spillane, Michael Shayne, et al. Because of my investiture name in The Baker Street Irregulars I am also known in some elite circles as Langdale Pike.

Yet even with all these handles, I still don’t feel I’ve ever found the right pen name. Somehow Dirda just doesn’t have the snap that says “best seller”: Dan Brown, Stephen King, Nora Roberts—strong simple, indeed Anglo-Saxon names. But I’m Russian-Slovak. My Cossack grandfather, who came over after the Russian Revolution, did spell Dirda with a Y (or at least it was so transliterated), and I’ve sometimes thought of reverting to that spelling and taking for a first name that of the most famous Cossack in literature. Hence, I would be—wait for it—Taras Dyrda. Now that has the look and ring of a future Nobel Prize winner in poetry. I mean if you’re going for Slavic weirdness, you may as well go all the way.

But enough about me. Have other members of the Reading Room ever thought of taking up a pen name or pseudonym? What did you come up? Please share your name and how you decided on it.

— Michael Dirda