Call Me Ishmael

By Susan _____-_________-___________.

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet.”

Writers choose their names all the time. From the Bronte sisters writing as men to Stephen King wondering if his work could find an audience without the “King” behind it, writers, for centuries, have struggled with their identity on book covers.

Yet for me, the question of a name goes back way before I decided to send my words out into the world and call myself a writer.  Let me explain.

I married young—at 23—and I liked my maiden name: Susan Park Ishmael. I like my masculine middle name: Park. It was the side of my family descended from Daniel Boone’s brother, Edward, who’d been killed in an ambush by the Cherokees. The Park side of me felt solid and strong. Dropping the middle name for matrimony felt like leaving a part of my heritage behind.

Then there was the matter of Ishmael. I loved the both Biblical and Melvillean aspects of the name, though few pronounced it exactly the way my family did. (We say Ish-mul, not Ish-male, or Ish-may-ell.) When I married a second generation Greek-American boy named Poulos, I was torn. What’s in a name? I asked.  

Yet I didn’t change my name after I married. I’ve used Susan Poulos (or Susan Ishmael-Poulos) professionally for the past seventeen years of my marriage, but deep down (and on paper) I am still Susan Park Ishmael.

Now comes the part where choosing my name for a submission becomes a bigger question. Am I Susan Ishmael? Susan Poulos?  Or some mix of the two?  Should I use Park for some measure of good luck? I studied book cases … do I want to (hypothetically) fall next to Kazuo Ishiguro, Jodi Picoult or James Patterson?

Decisions, decision!

Here are some authors who wrote under different names:

Pseudonym                Author’s Real Name

Ayn Rand                  Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum

Currer Bell                 Charlotte Bronte

Elis Bell                      Emily Bronte

George Orwell            Eric Arthur Blair

George Elliot              Mary Ann Evans

Isak Dinesen              Karen Blixen

Lemony Snicket         Daniel Handler

Mark Twain               Samuel Longhorne Clemens

Pablo Neruda             Ricardo Eliecer Naftali Reyes Basoalto

Richard Bachman       Stephen King

Sapphire                     Ramona Lofton

JD Robb                     Nora Roberts

I never wished for a name like Smith or Johnson. I like the unique fact that I am the only Susan Ishmael-Poulos out there. But when it comes to book covers, what really is in a name?