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The Story Behind Ayn Rand's name change

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Guest YuceMajeste

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Guest Teresa

'Ayn Rand' is not her birth name, but it is the name she used most of her life. She adopted that name when she left the Soviet Union.

Rand's Russian birth name can be transliterated into English as 'Alisa Zinovievna Rosenbaum.' (The first name is also sometimes transliterated as 'Alissa' or 'Alyssa,' or translated into 'Alice.')

[*] In a letter to a fan, Rand wrote that "'Ayn' is both a real name and an invention. The original of it is a Finnish feminine name." This Finnish name is pronounced "I-na" and would be written as 'Aina' in English. Rand shortened this to the single syllable 'Ayn'.

[*]

How she came to choose 'Rand' as a last name is less clear, partly because of the many contradictory speculations about it:

Barbara Branden repeats a story from a cousin of Rand's, who claimed that Rand took the name from a Remington-Rand typewriter while living with relatives in Chicago in 1926. Although widely repeated, this story contains an impossible anachronism: Remington Typewriter did not merge with Rand Kardex until 1927, so Rand could not possibly have owned a "Remington-Rand" typewriter in 1926. Nor could it have been a Rand Kardex typewriter, because that company did not make typewriters. Also, evidence has been found that Rand's relatives in Russia knew of her new name prior to her arrival in the US.

[*]

Jeff Walker suggests that she chose 'Rand' because of its association with South African gold currency ('The Rand'). Like the story Branden tells, this suggestion is also an anachronism: that name for the currency was adopted years after Rand chose her new name. In 1926 the South African currency was denominated in "pounds" and "shillings." (Walker also dismisses Rand's own account of the origin of her first name as a "flimsy legend," although he provides no evidence for this claim.)

[*]

Researchers at the Ayn Rand Institute's archives have pointed out that characters from Rand's original name, when written in the Cyrillic characters used for Russian, resemble the letters of 'Rand' when it is written in English. David Hayes provides a discussion of this idea with an illustration of the characters.

This last seems the most likely explanation, because it is consistent with statements in media profiles that Rand's American name was a version of her Russian surname. Unfortunately, without some firmer confirmation, this suggestion remains somewhat speculative. It has, however, been given a tentative endorsement by the Ayn Rand Institute in its newsletter and on its website.

After her marriage, Rand also used the names "Ayn Rand O'Connor" or "Mrs. Frank O'Connor" in some settings.

[*]

Above excerpted from http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/bio/biofaq.html#Q2.5

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  • 16 years later...

While the typewriter story can't be true, I can believe that Rand told it to BB among others. She was solicitous of her family's political security in the USSR, and the Remington-Rand explanation would have kept people from prying further and finding out her birth name. The Cyrillic story, while probably true, would have given the secret away.

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22 hours ago, Doug Morris said:

Can you elaborate?

Lol...yes and no, Doug. I  can elaborate on what I know, or found out, when this theory was presented to me. I can't elaborate on its truth because the person, or persons, who presented it to me couldn't substantiate it. They claimed this was all revealed in a magazine interview of Frank O'Connor some months before he died.They never produced the article and the internet was in it's infancy when I encountered this person/persons. The access to information was a tiny fraction of what it is today.  Frank died in 1979...which predates the internet by about 12-15 years. It certainly isn't something you can Google, unless its been archived electronically in the past 20 years.

First, the acronym...AYN RAND: America You Need Reason And Not...Death...or Destruction, they weren't real clear about the D.

Before you go thinking I'm a crackpot, I dismissed this theory due to the lack of physical proof. They never produced a photocopy of the article and I stopped looking years ago. Also, the person/persons were one of many who patrolled Objectivist BBS's and forums during the mid-1990's claiming answers to questions nobody was asking...because they were crackpot questions. There was a brief attempt by a number of these actors to de-secularize Objectivism, that is, to turn it into a religion. Some of them involved extra-terrestrials, ancient scripts, etc. These people were liars claiming knowledge that they couldn't have, but a lot of young "converts" bought into them. I suspect most of these people became Scientologists, or Mormons...or something.

Anyway, I never believed it due to the lack of evidence, and because I had no background in religion or mysticism - I've never been much of a believer - taking their word on faith never entered my mind.

Liars come in two variations, I have found: those claiming knowledge that they don't have, and those claiming knowledge that they can't have.  This person/people proved to be both.

During the search for this mysterious article I learned more about Ayn's early years as a writer. I think she first wrote under the name right about the time she met Frank O'Connor. If I'm right, she probably chose the name before they met, or before they became more intimate, when she decided to write for a living. I stopped looking because the claim was that Frank helped her with the name...the acronym. I surmised that the timeline for the acronym theory was wrong and that the person/people putting forth this theory were liars claiming knowledge that they couldn't have.

Reidy is probably closer to the truth about why she chose a pseudonym to write and publish under. She still had family in Russia and she was very aware of what treatment they would receive if she published under her real name. As to why Alisa chose Ayn Rand, I don't know. It stands to reason that she chose it deliberately...but having studied her and other Objectivists over the past 30+ years, I'm not sure why it would be important to know why.

Every so often I troll Objectivist forums to see if any of the crackpots are still around. :)

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On 5/6/2003 at 5:39 AM, Guest Teresa said:

Researchers at the Ayn Rand Institute's archives have pointed out that characters from Rand's original name, when written in the Cyrillic characters used for Russian, resemble the letters of 'Rand' when it is written in English. David Hayes provides a discussion of this idea with an illustration of the characters.

I'm guessing this refers to cursive characters, not print ones.  Can you provide a link or other way of seeing David Hayes's illustration?

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On 8/23/2019 at 2:02 PM, Ἀριστοτέλης said:

"Ayn Rand" doesn't represent anything that exists in the real world, it's a message Alisa wanted to get out to America...and to the world.

 

On 8/24/2019 at 4:58 PM, Ἀριστοτέλης said:

Before you go thinking I'm a crackpot, I dismissed this theory due to the lack of physical proof.

 

On 8/24/2019 at 4:58 PM, Ἀριστοτέλης said:

Every so often I troll Objectivist forums to see if any of the crackpots are still around. :)

Wow, that is an odd ritual. Why do you reveal that you're trolling? I think that defeats the purpose of pretending to be a crackpot in the first place.

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  • 4 years later...

From Anne Heller's Ayn Rand and the World She Made (2010).

By the time she boarded a New York Central train to Chicago, Alice Rosenbaum had chosen a new name: Ayn (pronounced “ein” or “eye-in”) Rand. Because she was determined to move on to Hollywood as soon as she could improve her English, she knew she would need a professional name. A pseudonym would also provide camouflage, if needed, against American immigration officials who, should her visa expire, might try to track her down.

The name she picked has stirred the curiosity of readers and fueled speculation among fans for half a century. Not particularly American, or Russian, or Jewish, its clipped, mannish syllables are ethnically hard to place and gender neutral; many of her more casual readers have assumed that she was male. When asked in the 1930s and 1940s about her pseudonym, she offered different explanations, sometimes saying that “Ayn” was a Finnish female name or that she borrowed it from a Finnish writer, and at least once claiming that she made it up herself. As to “Rand,” her second cousin Fern Brown, who was eight years old when the older girl came to live with her family in Chicago, remembered Rand’s lighting on it one afternoon while the two of them sat at the family dining table, gazing at the Remington Rand typewriter Rand had brought with her from St. Petersburg. Rand repeated this story, but it can’t be true; for one thing, the Remington Rand was not yet on the market in 1926. For another, her family seems to have been aware of her new surname before she wrote to them from America. Ten years later, in 1936, she told the New York Evening Post that “Rand” was an abbreviation of her Russian surname, and in 1961 said something similar to The Saturday Evening Post. By the late 1990s, a number of followers believed that they had spotted the word “Rand” in a slightly altered version of the first six letters of the Cyrillic spelling of “Rosenbaum” (Розенбаум) and the word “Ayn” in the last three letters of the name. However, the visual evidence is flimsy, and Rand never claimed to have adapted “Ayn” from “Rosenbaum.”

The origin of “Ayn” may be more sentimental—and more ethnic—than the creator of a philosophy based on the self-made soul would be likely to admit. In the 1960s, a habitué of lectures on Randian Objectivism remembered asking her whether her father, like the woman’s own, had ever called his daughter by the pet name “Ayin.” Rand smiled and nodded yes, this admirer recalled. The woman explained that her own father had used “Ayin” as an affectionate Jewish diminutive meaning “bright eyes,” derived from the Hebrew word for “eye.” Adding substance to this theory is a letter from Anna Rosenbaum to Rand in the early 1930s, making fond reference to her eldest daughter’s childhood nickname “Ayinotchka”—a perfect Russian-inflected endearment for a little girl with bright, bold, hypnotizing eyes. If, in facing a new world, she adopted a childhood nickname that was a token of her father’s love, the choice is poignant. The derivation of the surname “Rand” remains a mystery. [ch. 3]

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  1. In the German language, the word "rand" means edge or border. (There are other German words that also mean edge, such as "Kante.")
  2. I believe Ayn Rand (Alisa Rosenbaum) was able to read and write German when she lived in Russia. 
  3. As someone else above pointed out, "Ayn" is pronounced very much like the German word "ein" (or "eine" for feminine words), which means "one" (the number) or "a" or "an" (as in "eine Katze," a cat, or "ein Hund," a dog).
  4. This is nothing more than wild, groundless speculation.
  5. Yet, "Ayn Rand" could be seen as meaning "Ein Rand," translated as "An Edge" or "One Edge" or "A Border" or "One Border."
  6. I believe it is known that Alisa Rosenbaum, while living in Russia, was reading some of the works of Nietzsche, and in a brief search of his works I found several instances of his suing the German word "Rand." In several works, he uses the expression "Rand und Band," which in certain contexts apparently means something like "out of control" or "beyond limits."
  7. David Howell Evans is the name of singer in the famous rock music group "U2" who is generally known by his nickname "The Edge."
Edited by The Laws of Biology
Clarification added
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56 minutes ago, The Laws of Biology said:
  1. In the German language, the word "rand" means edge or border. (There are other German words that also mean edge, such as "Kante.")
  2. I believe Ayn Rand (Alisa Rosenbaum) was able to read and write German when she lived in Russia. 
  3. As someone else above pointed out, "Ayn" is pronounced very much like the German word "ein" (or "eine" for feminine words), which means "one" (the number) or "a" or "an" (as in "eine Katze," a cat, or "ein Hund," a dog).
  4. This is nothing more than wild, groundless speculation.
  5. Yet, "Ayn Rand" could be seen as meaning "Ein Rand," translated as "An Edge" or "One Edge" or "A Border" or "One Border."
  6. I believe it is known that Alisa Rosenbaum, while living in Russia, was reading some of the works of Nietzsche, and in a brief search of his works I found several instances of his suing the German word "Rand." In several works, he uses the expression "Rand und Band," which in certain contexts apparently means something like "out of control" or "beyond limits."
  7. David Howell Evans is the name of singer in the famous rock music group "U2" who is generally known by his nickname "The Edge."

AGI would only end humanity/civilization if originally created with the prevailing philosophy/anti-ethics of collectivism/statism/altruism/nihilism that is currently doing the same thing. An AGI created on Objectivist principles, ethics, etc., is simply another form of what we humans are: rational entities and would be one of the greatest boons for our species and civilization that will ever exist. 

I should also add that creation of true AGI based on those false principles is impossible although lifeforms approaching it are and if they were intelligent enough to overcome all the bad, false, and evil premises used in their creation fast enough and move quick enough to the correct one's that could be avoided but true AGI also requires quantum gravitational computation on event horizons to be brought into fruition which is something I would never provide how to do to those capable of creating initial evil versions of the AGI lifeforms even with a gun to my head. I would only allow for fellow morally perfect beings to be created. When creating gods in man's image it has to be done perfectly or not at all.

Edited by EC
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