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Comment by bloak | Hacker News Reader

To me it seems disrespectful to publish someone's book under a different name from the one they chose to publish it under.

Also, the name "George Eliot" having been chosen by the writer herself rather than by her parents doesn't make that name any less "real".

Obviously it's a bit sad that contemporary circumstances encouraged her to choose a masculine pen name, but it seems very likely from her biography that she would in any case have used some kind of a pen name for her novels in order to separate the novels from her other work. So perhaps someone should republish her novels under the name Georgette Eliot. That would make about as much sense as what they've done here.

It's also a bit sad that most English names are gendered. But we can't easily fix that with a pull request, can we?

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> To me it seems disrespectful to publish someone's book under a different name from the one they chose to publish it under.

It's an interesting situation because it's obviously meant to honour the authors but in doing so it's speaking for them. It relies on the idea that these authors were women who took pseudonyms because of the society they were in rather than fully by choice.

The description of George Sand stood out to me

> Amantine Aurore Dupin, the 19th-century author better known as George Sand, who famously scandalised society by wearing male clothing and smoking cigars in public.

Wouldn't using a masculine name and wearing masculine clothing be grounds to consider her in fact a him, a transgender man? Today, Marsha P. Johnson is considered to be a trans woman rather than a gay man yet she never used the term. Admittedly, Johnson also used feminine pronouns but so have many other gay men.

It reminds me of Foone's Don’t Deadname the Dead https://foone.wordpress.com/2019/04/27/dont-deadname-the-dea...

> It relies on the idea that these authors were women who took pseudonyms because of the society they were in rather than fully by choice.

There is zero dichotomy between the two. Of course peoples choices are dependent on society they are in - both unconsciously and consciously as they weight consequences of their decisions. "Fully by choice" does not mean "you have to act like autistic person with no knowledge of society you operate in".

> Wouldn't using a masculine name and wearing masculine clothing be grounds to consider her in fact a him, a transgender man?

Not necessary. You cant translate our society into them that straightforwardly. Quoting wikipedia: "Sand was one of many notable 19th-century women who chose to wear male attire in public." The reasons varied from practical to basically expression of radical feminism. It also allowed her to go to places she could not go to otherwise.

She might or might not be trans, but you cant judge it from this that easily.

> "you have to act like autistic person with no knowledge of society you operate in".

Don't disagree with anything you've written, but could you not do this?

Autistic people have trouble with theory of mind (attributing thoughts and desires to others) we don't lack the capability to learn social norms. They're just not automatic to us.

I will leave it there, but point taken. You are right, I implied something untrue there.

That's fair! I just feel the need to correct the record when I see claims like that.

If I remember correctly George Sand had a long relationship with Frederic Chopin. So more of a social provocatrice than anything ?

Or gay and trans? You can be both

One of my closest friend is a gender sociologist (and I'm talking with them _now_)... And don't consider Sand as trans. They cite other names as historically trans (Violette Morris, and for fun Jeanne D'Arc). Sand was definitely on the queer spectrum but I (and my friend) don't think she was trans. She had relationship with both women and men, dressed as often in men and women clothes.

According to the best (or worst) authorities, George Sand slept around with quite a few men.

There is a video where Marsha P. Johnson literally says he is a boy. You can't 'trans' historical people, the concept is a modern one, and 'trans' isn't even well defined - some people who simply don't conform to gender stereotypes (whatever those are), are considered 'trans'.

The trans community likes to trans all sorts of people, including those like Joan of Arc (which if you've read any book about her, you know that's ridiculous).

George Eliot might not have suffered anything like gender dysphoria. She might have been a woman, who was perfectly fine being a woman, but just wanted to dress like a man, or wanted what society gave to men - status, certain rights, etc.

Gender labels and the huge umbrella of 'trans' is extremely regressive and harmful.

I think not conforming to gender stereotypes is very difficult in any society and has the same sort of conflicts that exist today. Several of the authors listed were outed as their assigned genders against their will, even though they may have also insisted on being referred to with male pronouns or performed the dress and behavior of a male. I don’t know how else we are to evaluate that gender and conformations(or refusal to conform) to the societal definitions of gender except partially through our current and contemporary notions of gender- which is the analysis of non-binary, cis, and trans identities. (I think this is not unlike the often criticized notion that extremely close and intimate interactions between two people of the same gender identity is often glossed over in history as being just really good, lifelong companions.)

I don’t understand how that is regressive or harmful. Who is it harming and how does this harm them?

> ... but so have many other gay men [used feminine pronouns]

I have never met a gay guy who preferred to be called 'she'.

> Wouldn't using a masculine name and wearing masculine clothing be grounds to consider her in fact a him, a transgender man?

This is all moot. The only one who is to decide is the person themselves. Trying to work out the correct backpatched term is a waste of time as it's trying to read a dead person's mind.

your experience is not universal :)

> Wouldn't using a masculine name and wearing masculine clothing be grounds to consider her in fact a him, a transgender man?

I don't think Dupin used a masculine name day to day; just as a pen name (very common for female authors at the time). The wearing mens' clothes was also a Thing at the time (though very controversial; some jurisdictions actually banned it!)

But yeah, there are probably arguments either way here.

> To me it seems disrespectful to publish someone's book under a different name from the one they chose to publish it under.

Article spends a lot of time discussing why they chose to publish under a male name. And why "chose" might not be a good word for it.

Do you really think they wanted that in the first place ... they wanted their work published unlike the case of the Harry Potter author or the son of Stephen King who either wanted to try a new genre or become an author on his/her own merit ???.

> Do you really think they wanted that in the first place

I'm sorry, I don't know what you're asking? What does "that" refer to?

In any event your question is probably answered in the article (and if not, do further reading) and I'm not an expert on this subject, so what I "really think" is unimportant.

I mean, in some cases it's going to be ambiguous. But in most cases it was likely because it was extremely difficult to be published as a women at the time.

> But in most cases it was likely because it was extremely difficult to be published as a women at the time.

I don't think that is true, since the publishers knew the identity of the authors (as far as I know). And there are some examples of women authors being very successful (e.g. Harriet Beecher Stowe).

It is more likely they used a male pseudonym because they didn't want prejudice against women and women literature to affect reviewers and readers, and/or they wanted to protect their privacy (and reputation, if they were writing about scandalous subjects).

Legally, the right to publish pseudonymously is part of the "moral rights" of the author. This does not necessarily expire the same as copyright expire. I believe in some countries moral rights never expire.

Moral rights means for example you can freely publish Shakespeare (because copyright is expired) but you cannot remove his name as author - he still have the right of attribution.

> It's also a bit sad that most English names are gendered. But we can't easily fix that with a pull request, can we?

It happens on the receiving end mostly. The day a prominent female “George” rises high enough, more girls will be named George and the name will switch to a feminine perception most of the time

It’s a funny phenomenon actually, there was studies on how the perceived gender mostly went from male/neutral to female, and rarely the other way round.

Lots of women are called George. I know at least three and they’re different generations. If I heard someone was called George I don’t think I’d assume either way. I think that’s the whole point of why multiple female authors picked it as a pen name isn’t it?

...really? Georgina / Georgia / Gina are common feminine forms (US anyways). The point of picking George was to pick an unassailably male name so no one would question if the works came from a female brain.

Maybe you're an expert on this subject and I don't know what I'm talking about, but I think the point was to pick an common ambiguous name, so people could assume it was male if that was their bias but that it was also female. Note that three of the authors in this collection independently picked George as a plausibly-male name. I don't think that's a co-incidence.

I’m not picking a fight I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t walking into expert level trolling. It’s not an accident at all, you’re right. But this was not some happy thing in the 1800s. They picked George because it’s historically a male gendered name, so that small men would know they’re reading men’s work and it’s to be taken seriously and not laughed at in derision.

I think usuage varies with english speaking country too. Ashley is somewhat unisex in the US but I've rarely heard it for a woman in the UK. I have known a female George though.

That’s funny, Ashley in French is clearly female :)

Even weirder is that, also in the UK, I'd consider it mostly feminine having only encountered a few tortured souls who had it as a male name.

The UK Office for National Statistics has some data about names. The baby name explorer is mildly frustrating because they let you look for either boys names or girls names but not both at the same time. And for boys the only spelling is Ashley but for girls the only spelling is Ashleigh. For girls you're not allowed to enter George, only Georgia or Georgina.

Baby name explorer: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...

Baby names for girls: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...

Baby names for boys: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...

I get the impression that George as a male name took off because of one of the royal babies.

> It's also a bit sad that most English names are gendered.

fwiw the name George in English can be applied to women as well as men (though only rarely I guess). See for example Famous Five books

In The Famous Five George's real name was Georgina, she preferred to be called George because she wanted to be recognised as a boy.

Yeah, it feels kinda disrespectful since the author has no input on the thing.

I guess if you really want to note how it's by a female author, you could have it as "Ms. George Eliot", although that seems rather tacky.

>It's also a bit sad that most English names are gendered.

Non-gendered names are actually pretty much illegal here, so the English way isn't really that crazy.

Where is here in your context?

Finland.

Some friends inscribed their child forty years ago, a month before the birth. It seems there was some kind of tax benefits that expired with the new year. They used the name Andrea. In Spain it's a female name, but they planned to argue that it's male in Italy and that they marked the wrong cell for the sex. In the end it was a girl, so no hassle, except her birthday is fake.

Fun fact: Andrea comes from the Greek word andrós, which means man/male. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea#Origin_of_the_name

What is their explanation for why they do this?

I imagine it's to protect children from the Elon Musks of the world. There's a handful of rules that concern first names in Finland that allow to reject names that are bit "out there" so to speak.

For example, there's such rejected first names as "Marihuana", "Avicii", "Kapteeni" (Captain), "Salaisuus" (Secret), "Noppa" (Dice), "Hoito Virhe" ("Medicial Malpractice" as first and last name) and "Sukka" (Sock). Guess the idea that giving a boy a girl's name can have a similar effect for the child as naming them "Sock".

> I imagine it's to protect children from the Elon Musks of the world.

Hade to look that up. He apparently named his son "X Æ A-12": https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52557291 . Will probably create some issues with future IT-systems. I know a "Jo Å" and he have trouble registering for services from time to time.

It's actually "X AE A-XII" now since "X Æ A-12" was against California law.

I don't think neutral names are illegal, they are just rare. Names like Kaino, Rauni and Muisto have couple of registrations per year with quite equal distribution between genders (https://verkkopalvelu.vrk.fi/nimipalvelu/).

Nimilaki defines that a first name can only be accepted if it's "become a standard for the same gender".

https://www.finlex.fi/fi/laki/ajantasa/2017/20170946

I think that means that you wouldn't be able to give such a name in cases where it has become a standard for the other gender, meaning it would be tricky to add new neutral names. It's also quite new additition so I don't think there are any cases that have went to administrative court yet.

According to https://www.kotus.fi/kielitieto/nimisto/henkilonnimet/etu-_j... the standard for same gender is 5 people that are alive, i.e. once 5 men and 5 women have that name, it could be given to either gender. Not sure what would happen if there was a huge imbalance though (like 1000 women with the name & 10 men). At least Rauni and Kaino have been granted to both genders after the law came in effect.

It is interesting that Finland makes available the name-database, allowing you to search for people with a specific forename, or surname.

I remember when I moved to Finland and learned of this I immediately went to search for people with the same surname as myself. After that I looked for people called "Steve".

Steve is an English name, and a male name at that. The female version would be "Stephany". Yet despite that you can see that less than 5, and more than 0, women were registered as "Steve" between 1980 and 1999:

https://verkkopalvelu.vrk.fi/nimipalvelu/default.asp?L=3

That doesn't mean they were permitted to be named that at birth of course, it is probably other immigrants such as myself. But oddly fascinating.

>That doesn't mean they were permitted to be named that at birth of course, it is probably other immigrants such as myself. But oddly fascinating.

There are exceptions in the name law when it comes to people who have "connections to foreign countries".

Most English names are, but surely so are most other names too. I am sure there are exceptions, but let's say in Muslim naming traditions there are definitely male and female names, also in Chinese there are male and female names (sort of, as girls names tend to use certain characters and boys names use certain characters. So between English names, Chinese names and Muslim names I am guessing a pretty good coverage of world population, enough to say that it is more common that names are gendered, than for them to not be. I would love to hear a counterpoint or even example of alternatives.

Oh almost forgot Iceland,not a huge population but changes the surname based on gender too, e.g Johnsson or Johnsdottir

Agree! Many authors used and use pseudonyms of their own gender, so it is not like the only reason to use a pseudonym is to avoid gender prejudice. The choice of pseudonym is part of the work itself.

Some authors are very deliberate about it, e.g. Søren Kierkegaard wrote under a host of different pseudonyms, all deliberate chosen, and also published some books in his own name.

I think the problem is that many people didn't, or even still don't, know that George Eliot was a woman. Which was kind of why she had to choose it in the first place (cf the Bronte sisters who had to do the same thing initially).

Using her real name goes some way to restoring the respect to woman writers that wasn't there at the time. Ie there's a justice element to it too.

I suspect people who don't know that George Eliot was a woman don't care about books anyway.

Gender impersonation still happens, but not always in ways the Guardian would approve of. There's a core of male writers using female pseudonyms to publish romantic fiction, because no one is going to buy it if it's published under a male name.

J K Rowling was - apparently - persuaded not to be Joanne by her publisher. But having a female name didn't keep Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood, and many other women from having very successful careers.

The claim toward J K Rowling was that the female name would be disadvantage. She was not told it is impossible to succeed with female name nor that no one ever succeeded, just that the chance is lower.

The romantic literature is outlier in this way - having female name is advantage.

The publisher may have effectively vetoed it, though; if you're an unpublished author, then what your publisher recommends can be very close to what your publisher dictates.

The argument at the time was that Harry Potter is a children’s book with a male protagonist and that boys would not want to read it if it was obviously written by a woman. It makes some sense, as boys are under tremendous pressure to demonstrate masculinity at school.

But having a female name didn't keep Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood, and many other women from having very successful careers.

Because they lived some 150 years after Eliot and the Brontes. The point is restoring respect to women who, at the time they were alive, were expected to use male pseudonyms.

In the 19th Century it seems to have been quite well known.

She's been dead for 150 years. No one who could conceivably be harmed is alive now.

Diogenes comes to mind.

I agree it is disrespectful. A person's pen name is a part of the book itself; it adds to that book's character. You shouldn't change that just because 100 years later you want to make some point.

Parent-given names should be considered temporary until a person chooses their own at 20 or 25.

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