Art name

A pseudonym or pen name, also known by its native names hao (in China), gō (in Japan) and ho (in Korea), is a professional name used by East Asian artists. The word and the concept originated in China, then became popular in other East Asian countries (especially Japan and Korea).

In some cases, artists adopted different pseudonyms at different stages of their career, usually to mark significant changes in their life. Extreme practitioners of this tendency were Tang Yin of the Ming Dynasty, who had more than ten hao and Hokusai of Japan, who in the period 1798 to 1806 alone used no fewer than six.

History

China

In Chinese culture, the hào originally refers to any name a person gives himself, as opposed to a birth name (which is given him by his parents or other elders). The use of this name as a nom de plume or artistic name, however, appears to have begun only during the Six Dynasties period, with Tao Yuanming and Ge Hong among the first literati to have given themselve hào.

Art names came into vogue during the Tang Dynasty, during which time they could either be coined by the person himself, or given to him as a name by others. Most hào can be placed within a few categories: