In Urdu poetry, the pen name taken by a poet and usually woven into the last couplet of a ghazal is called:
- A.Radif
- B.Qafiya
- C.Takhallus
- D.Maqta
Correct answer
Explanation
The correct answer is C, takhallus. The takhallus is the pen name a poet adopts, such as Ghalib, Mir, Faiz or Firaq, and by convention the poet mentions it in the closing couplet of a ghazal. A is wrong because the radif is the word or phrase repeated at the end of each couplet of a ghazal. B is wrong because the qafiya is the rhyming element that comes just before the radif. D is wrong because the maqta is the name of that closing couplet itself, the place in which the takhallus appears; the two are related but not the same, and this is the strongest distractor in the set. The opening couplet is the matla, and a candidate who knows matla, maqta, radif, qafiya and takhallus can answer any question from this group.
Read the full article: Pen Names of Famous Writers: Real Names and Takhallus
Practice Questions
View allPremchand was the pen name of which writer?
- A.Dhanpat Rai Srivastava
- B.Suryakant Tripathi
- C.Ramdhari Singh
- D.Ayodhya Singh Upadhyay
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He wrote first in Urdu as Nawab Rai, and after the colonial administration seized his collection Soz-e-Watan he adopted the name Premchand, under which he wrote Godan, Nirmala, Gaban, Rangbhoomi and the story Kafan.
Read the full explanation →Nirala was the pen name of:
- A.Sumitranandan Pant
- B.Suryakant Tripathi
- C.Mahadevi Verma
- D.Jaishankar Prasad
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He is always written as Suryakant Tripathi Nirala, the pen name meaning the unique or the unlike-any-other, and he wrote Saroj Smriti, Ram ki Shakti Puja and the poem Bhikshuk.
Read the full explanation →Mark Twain, the author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, was the pen name of:
- A.Samuel Langhorne Clemens
- B.William Sydney Porter
- C.Eric Arthur Blair
- D.Charles Lutwidge Dodgson
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He took the name from the call of a Mississippi riverboat crew, where mark twain meant a sounding of two fathoms, that is water deep enough to be safe.
Read the full explanation →Which pen name was used by Mirza Asadullah Baig Khan?
- A.Ghalib
- B.Firaq
- C.Josh
- D.Majrooh
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Mirza Asadullah Baig Khan first wrote under the takhallus Asad and later chose Ghalib, which means dominant or victorious, and he names himself in the closing couplet of many ghazals.
Read the full explanation →George Eliot, the author of Middlemarch, was the pen name of which writer?
- A.Jane Austen
- B.Mary Ann Evans
- C.Emily Bronte
- D.Virginia Woolf
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She took a man's name so that her novels would be judged as serious literature rather than as light romances by a woman, and she wrote Middlemarch, Silas Marner, Adam Bede and The Mill on the Floss under it.
Read the full explanation →