ABSTRACT
The lexical meaning of the Danish word (from the Latin anonymus, following the Greek ἀνώνυμος) is the quality of lacking or refraining from using a name with regard to one’s public activities, perhaps especially as they may relate to the creation of literary or otherwise artistic works.1 An anonym (literally, “without a name”) is a designation or mark, sometimes alphabetic or alphanumeric, used to conceal the name of the author of a written work without substituting a pseudonym for the author’s real name. In addition to being marked with an anonym, an anonymous work can (and often does) simply lack any ascription of authorship, or the author can be straightforwardly designated as “Anonymous.” As in the case of pseudonymity, anonymous authorship may originate in an intention to conceal, but with regard to historical texts it is often instead the consequence of a loss of knowledge of the author’s name with the passage of time.
