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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/47792
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/47792
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

# Picking an Alias, also for Picking a Character Name

One approach is to use a common name as your alias. This doesn't have to be Smith or Jones, Here is a list of the [Most Common Surnames in North America](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_common_surnames_in_North_America) by country, in the USA "Anderson" is the 12th most common surname, with over 750,000 instances.

The same goes for [Most Common Male First Names](https://names.mongabay.com/male_names.htm) and [Most Common Female First Names](https://names.mongabay.com/female_names.htm).

Pick a combination of common first name and common surname. NOW, put that name into [How Many of Me](http://howmanyofme.com/search/), which will tell you how many people (in the USA) have that same name.

For example, I picked Lisa (#11) Anderson (#12), at random. How Many of Me says there are 1,161,853 people in the USA with the first name Lisa, and 932,840 people with the last name Anderson, and 3,284 people with the name "Lisa Anderson".

That is a decent sized crowd of people to try and search through, so on a message board or something (without your photo) it would be difficult for anybody to claim a post signed by "Lisa Anderson" is definitely **you** , there are too many people to disambiguate. If you don't think 3000 is a big enough crowd to hide in, look for combinations that produce a bigger crowd.

Also, you should Google the name, in quotes, e.g. "Lisa Anderson". When I Google "Lisa Anderson" I get 1.3 million hits.

Now usually, these searches will produce some most-famous person(s) with that name, and you do need to check you aren't assuming a name that is already a published author (Just like I can't use as my alias J.K. Rowling or Stephen King), but if you skip forward by five or ten pages at a time, you will find "Lisa Anderson" in all kinds of professions, athletes, nurses, kids in college, real estate agent, and on and on.

However, when I Google **author "Lisa Anderson"** I find one of these famous people has written four books, under her own name, and I probably can't use that as an _author_ alias. So if that is your plan for the future, that name is out, start over. Or, you could make your author alias something like "L.M. Anderson", that disambiguates you from the real "Lisa Anderson" that wrote "The Dating Manifesto" and other books.

But for message boards, facebook, etc, or as a character in a book, you could still use "Lisa Anderson". One real Lisa Anderson becoming an author doesn't give her exclusive rights to the name in public forums, to shut out 3200 _other_ Lisa Andersons.

You still have to take care in choosing your alias, make sure you share it with a crowd, but also that you didn't choose a **too** famous name you couldn't use as an author alias.

Original score: 1