composed of ὄνομα ("name"), and ψεῦδος or, to be more exact, ψευδές. Literally translated, a "pseudonym" is a "false name." Is it really so? Not at all. If an impostor assumes a noble name and travels under this "false name," he is not then bearing a "pseudonym." The noble name is indeed supposed to conceal who its bearer is "in truth." Nevertheless, the "false name" of the impostor is no mere cover name. Such a name is used for military operations, for example the "operation Michael" on the Western front in the previous war. This name simply covers something that is in no way to appear. On the contrary, however, the assumed name of an impostor not only covers up his "true nature"; in addition, while covering, it also has to let the bearer of the name appear in "grandeur," a grandeur which to be sure does not belong to him, as little as does the name. In contradistinction, the "pseudonym" is neither simply a false name nor a cover name, nor even a name that is simply misleading. The "pseudonym," i.e., the essentially fitting name, is indeed supposed to cover up an author; yet in a certain way it also has to let him come into the open, and in fact not as one he in truth is not (the case of the impostor), but as the one he really is. Thus Kierkegaard published in 1843, in Copenhagen, this work: Fear and Trembling The Dialectical Lyric of Johannes de Silentio. This "Lord Silence" intended to intimate hereby something essential about himself and his literary activity. Similarly the "pseudonyms" of Kierkegaard's two books Philosophical Fragments (1844) and Training in Christianity (1850) stand in an essential relation. The first bears the name of the author Johannes Climacus; the other is published by Anti-Climacus.
The meaning of ψεῦδος in "pseudonym" eludes us if we translate it as "false." We have here a covering that at the same time unveils something recondite and does so in a specifically recondite way, whereas a "false name," e.g., that of the impostor, is also not simply incorrect, but it covers up while making visible something pertaining only to the facade and to the most unrecondite.
Under the force of the essential relations named by the Greek word ψεῦδος, we have already spoken, almost "automatically," of "covering," and "veiling," but at the same time also of "letting-appear." Ψεῦδος pertains to the essential realm of covering, hence it is a kind of concealing. The covering involved in ψεῦδος, however, is always at the same moment an unveiling, a showing, and a bringing into appearance. Now it is time, however, to leave the word to the Greeks themselves, so we may have a witness testifying that, and to what extent, ψεῦδος belongs to the essential realm of concealing and unconcealedness. Let us cite two places, the one from Homer, the other from Hesiod. These places ["Stellen"] are not mere authorities ["Belegstellen"], which by the simple accumulation of a large number would gain demonstrative power; for it is not a matter here of demonstrating and arguing,