Which pen name was used by Mirza Asadullah Baig Khan?
- A.Ghalib
- B.Firaq
- C.Josh
- D.Majrooh
Correct answer
Explanation
The correct answer is A, Ghalib. 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. B is wrong because Firaq, in full Firaq Gorakhpuri, was the pen name of Raghupati Sahay. C is wrong because Josh, in full Josh Malihabadi, was the pen name of Shabbir Hasan Khan. D is wrong because Majrooh, in full Majrooh Sultanpuri, was the pen name of Asrar ul Hassan Khan. In Urdu poetry such a pen name is called the takhallus and the second word is usually the poet's town, which is why Gorakhpuri, Malihabadi, Sultanpuri, Ludhianvi and Azmi recur in these lists. For revision, fix the four names with their towns: Ghalib of Delhi, Firaq of Gorakhpur, Josh of Malihabad and Majrooh of Sultanpur, and remember that Asad was the name Ghalib used before he settled on the one by which he is known.
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
Show answer
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
Show answer
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
Show answer
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 →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
Show answer
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 →The pen name used by Rabindranath Tagore for the poems of Bhanusimha Thakurer Padavali was:
- A.Gurudev
- B.Bhanusimha
- C.Kabiguru
- D.Thakur
Show answer
As a boy Tagore wrote poems in an archaic Vaishnava style and presented them as the work of a poet named Bhanusimha, and the collection is therefore called Bhanusimha Thakurer Padavali.
Read the full explanation →