Mononym

Mononyms in other ancient cultures include Hannibal, the Celtic queen Boudica, and the Numidian king Jugurtha.

During the early Middle Ages, mononymity slowly declined, with northern and eastern Europe keeping the tradition longer than the south.

For example, the Aztec emperor whose name was preserved in Nahuatl documents as Motecuhzoma Xocoyotzin was called "Montezuma" in subsequent histories.

In current histories he is often named Moctezuma II, using the European custom of assigning regnal numbers to hereditary heads of state.

Native Americans from the 15th through 19th centuries, whose names are often thinly documented in written sources, are still commonly referenced with a mononym.

[9] In the 18th century, François-Marie Arouet (1694–1778) adopted the mononym Voltaire, for both literary and personal use, in 1718 after his imprisonment in Paris' Bastille, to mark a break with his past.

The German writer, mining engineer, and philosopher Georg Friedrich Philipp Freiherr von Hardenberg (1772–1801) became famous as Novalis.

[15] The 19th-century Dutch writer Eduard Douwes Dekker (1820–87), better known by his mononymous pen name Multatuli[16] (from the Latin multa tuli, "I have suffered [or borne] many things"), became famous for the satirical novel, Max Havelaar (1860), in which he denounced the abuses of colonialism in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia).

[17] Monarchs and other royalty, for example Napoleon, have traditionally availed themselves of the privilege of using a mononym, modified when necessary by an ordinal or epithet (e.g., Queen Elizabeth II or Charles the Great).

Surnames were introduced in Turkey only after World War I, by the country's first president, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, as part of his Westernization and modernization programs.

In Canada, where government policy often included the imposition of Western-style names, one of the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada was for all provinces and territories to waive fees to allow Indigenous people to legally assume traditional names, including mononyms.

[23] In modern times, in countries that have long been part of the East Asian cultural sphere (Japan, the Koreas, Vietnam, and China), mononyms are rare.

[24] Some younger people may have them, but this practice is becoming rarer, since mononyms are no longer allowed for newborns since 2022 (see Naming law § Indonesia).

Several Indian film personalities, such as Biswajit, Dharmendra, Govinda, Kajol, Pran, Rekha, Irrfan, and Tabu, are also mononymous.

Govindjee, Professor Emeritus of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Plant Biology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, an Indian-American and an authority on photosynthesis, publishes his research under his singular name.

[citation needed] In the Near East's Arab world, the Syrian poet Ali Ahmad Said Esber (born 1930) at age 17 adopted the mononym pseudonym, Adunis, sometimes also spelled "Adonis".

[28] In the West, mononymity, as well as its use by royals in conjunction with titles, has been primarily used or given to famous people such as prominent writers, artists, entertainers, musicians and athletes.