A Choice of Pseudonyms

ELIZABETH, Queen of Roumania between 1881 and her death in 1916, was a writer. For many years she turned out verses and stories purely for her own interest and that of her private circle, but then one day it occurred to her that as what she wrote seemed to go down well with friends and acquaintances, it might reasonably, therefore, be worth publishing. At the same time, though, she did not wish to publish under her own name. What name should she use instead? She wanted it, she said, to be something Latin, as she now belonged to a Latin country, and eventually she fixed upon the combination Carmen Sylva (carmen being the Latin for song, silva for forest), explaining: ‘I began in the woods and found my best songs in roaming through the forests of my home on the Rhine.’ It was certainly one way of choosing a pseudonym.