Art name
any name a person gives oneself, originated from the Six Dynasties period; common to artists, poets, but not exclusively in East Asia
An art name, also variously translated as a style name, pseudonym, or pen name and also known directly by its native names hào (in Mandarin Chinese), gō (in Japanese), ho (in Korean), and tên hiệu (in Vietnamese), is a professional name used by artists, poets, and writers in the Sinosphere. The word and the concept originated in China, where it was used as nicknames for the educated, then became popular in other East Asian countries, especially Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and the former Kingdom of Ryukyu.
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, Hokusai of Japan, who in the period 1798 to 1806 alone used no fewer than six, and Kim Chŏnghŭi of the Joseon Dynasty who had up to 503.
History
China
In Chinese culture, Hao refers to honorific names made by oneself or given by others when one is in middle age. After one's gaining the Hao, other persons may then call such a person by one's Hao even without such a person being presented. Hao usually is made by a person oneself, but sometimes is given by a high-ranked official or even is bestowed by the monarch.
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 themselves Hao.
Art names came into vogue during the Tang dynasty, during which time they could either be coined by the persons themselves, or given to them as a name by others. Most Hao can be placed within a few categories:
Hao derived from the locations or characteristics of the person's residence.
The public source identifies “Art name” as any name a person gives oneself, originated from the Six Dynasties period; common to artists, poets, but not exclusively in East Asia. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around name, person and gives.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q39646. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1798 and 1806.
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This entry incorporates text from “Art name” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.