List of fictitious people

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Fictitious people are nonexistent people, who, unlike fictional people, have been claimed to actually exist. Usually this is done as a practical joke or hoax, but sometimes fictitious people are 'created' as part of a fraud. Sometimes the line between the two categories is blurred, e.g., as in the case of Abdul Alhazred[clarification needed]. A pseudonym may also be considered by some to be a "fictitious person", although this is not the correct definition.

Hoaxes[]

  • William Ashbless, a 19th-century fictitious poet and adventurer.
  • Bilitis, nonexistent Ancient Greek poet. Supposed author of The Songs of Bilitis, a collection of erotic poetry "discovered" by Pierre Louÿs.
  • George P. Burdell, eternal Georgia Tech student.
  • Eddie Burrup, fake Australian aboriginal painter.
  • Johnny "The Celestial Comet" Chung, supposed Chinese-American football player for the nonexistent Plainfield Teacher's College.
  • Allegra Coleman, nonexistent supermodel.
  • Tom Collins, fictitious gossip and namesake of the gin-and-lemon-based cocktail.
  • Helen Demidenko, nonexistent Ukrainian author, created by Australian writer Helen Darville.
  • Aimi Eguchi, fictional Japanese idol. Member of idol group AKB48 created as a composite of the other members.
  • Frederick R. Ewing, nonexistent author of I, Libertine.
  • Anthony Godby Johnson, (probably) fictitious author of Rock and a Hard Place: One Boy's Triumphant Story.
  • Kilroy, a nonexistent legendary World War II US Army major who inspired millions during the war and became part of American popular culture.
  • Ern Malley, nonexistent Australian poet, created by Australian poets James McAuley and Harold Stewart.
  • Lillian Virginia Mountweazel, a photographer who existed as a fictitious entry in the 4th edition of the New Columbia Encyclopedia. The publishers assumed that if they caught another encyclopedia containing their copyright trap, the presence of the non-existent Mountweazel would prove that their competitors hadn’t done any original research and copied them.
  • Karyl Robin-Evans, nonexistent scientist whose expedition is chronicled in the book Sungods in Exile.
  • H. Rochester Sneath, nonexistent English public school headmaster and prolific letter writer, created by Humphry Berkeley.
  • Georg Paul Thomann, nonexistent Austrian conceptual artist, created by art group monochrom to represent Austria at the 2002 Sao Paulo Art Biennial. Georg Paul Thomann is featured in RE/Search's "Pranks 2" book.
  • Piotr Zak, nonexistent Polish composer, created for a BBC programme by Susan Bradshaw and Hans Keller.
  • Hugo N. Frye, a fictional figure, purportedly the founder of the Republican Party in New York State, made up by Cornell University students in 1930 as a prank designed to embarrass several state politicians.

Pseudonyms[]

This list includes pseudonyms supplied with a biography suggesting the existence of a person distinct from the actual person with the pseudonym in question, often with the purpose of a hoax.

See also Category:Collective pseudonyms (many of them were not claimed as "real" people).

  • Penelope Ashe, supposed "demure Long Island housewife" who authored Naked Came The Stranger. Actually a pseudonym of a collective of writers, and portrayed by one of their relatives during interviews.
  • Richard Bachman, a pseudonym of Stephen King, given a fake biography and author photo.
  • Silence Dogood, a false persona used by Benjamin Franklin to get his work published.
  • Roderick Jaynes, editor of all the films of Joel and Ethan Coen. Actually a pseudonym for the Coens themselves. "Jaynes", supposedly a cantankerous Englishman in his 80s, has also penned a dismissive introduction to a book of the Coens' scripts, and an article in The Guardian discussing his work on The Man Who Wasn't There.
  • Kozma Prutkov, arrogant Russian writer and government official, who published bombastic pieces that ended up being satirical commentary on Russian bureaucracy. A creation of 4 Russian writers, including Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy (1817-1875) and Alexei Zhemchuzhnikov.
  • Lemony Snicket, a pseudonym used by Daniel Handler for his A Series of Unfortunate Events. Snicket, who is also a character in the books, is the meta-fictional narrator of the series.
  • Wrench Tuttle, an Atlanta-based "poet, traveler, activist and philosopher". Canadian musician/composer Bob Wiseman "collaborated" with lyricist Tuttle by mail, for the 1989 album In Her Dream: Bob Wiseman Sings Wrench Tuttle. Tuttle was, in reality, Wiseman.
  • Kilgore Trout originally was a character created by Kurt Vonnegut, who later became a pseudonym used by Philip José Farmer to publish, as a homage to Vonnegut, an actual version of one of the fictional Trout's books, Venus on the Half-Shell (1975). Farmer's work is based on a moment in Vonnegut's God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater that describes a character reading a copy of Trout's novel, "Venus on the Half-Shell". Vonnegut was not happy about the publication of Farmer's book, but he declined to sue over the use of his intellectual property.[1]
  • Gerald Wiley, authorial pseudonym used by sketch comedy performer Ronnie Barker on shows in which he was a performer. Initially, even other writers on the show were unaware that sketches submitted by "Wiley" were in fact written by Barker; Barker wanted his sketches to be judged on merit, not on the fact he was a cast member or star.
  • Andrew MacDonald, a pseudonym for William Luther Pierce, white supremacist and author of The Turner Diaries.

Arts and entertainment[]

Academia[]

Politics[]

  • Andre Kasongo Ilunga, a member of the UNAFEC party and Minister of National Economy and Trade of the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 2007.
  • Jakob Maria Mierscheid, a member of the German Bundestag. Despite not existing, Mierscheid has an official Parliamentary biography (complete with portrait) and has given his name to a bridge spanning the River Spree and to the Mierscheid Law, which has been used to predict voting patterns in the former West Germany.

Covert operations[]

  • Major William Martin, RM, a dead courier found floating off the coast of Spain possessing documents outlining future Allied strategy. The documents were misinformation planted by the Security Service as part of Operation Mincemeat, a World War II deception plan to cover the invasion of Sicily.[2]

Sports[]

Unclassified[]

Please help in putting them into appropriate sections.

References[]

  1. ^ Leeds, Marc (2016). The Vonnegut Encyclopedia (Revised and updated ed.). New York. ISBN 978-0-385-34423-4. OCLC 960816202.
  2. ^ Ben Macintyre, "Operation Mincemeat", Bloomsbury, 2010, passim.
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