Talk:Pseudo-Aristotle

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Philosophy: Ancient Low‑importance

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"General cognomen" as citogenesis

Pseudo-Aristotle is a general cognomen for authors of philosophical or medical treatises who attributed their work to the Greek philosopher Aristotle, or whose work was later attributed to him by others.

This sentence appears to have been cut and paste far and wide all over the internet, pressed into service wherever "Pseudo-Aristotle" is first introduced.

The other similar case I'm aware of is Nicolas Bourbaki, a collective pseudonym initiated by French mathematicians Henri Cartan and André Weil. The term "cognomen" does not occur in that article (nor the more apt "general cognomen" if this were the established term).

The notion of a "general" cognomen does not seem to be specifically defined in the major dictionaries (few of which made it into my search results for queries including the word "define").

In ten hard minutes on Google, 80% of what I was able to dig up only reinforced my initial concern over citogenesis, but this is not really my dog, so I'll leave it for the next editor to make a judgement call.

For myself, "pseudonym" is a bit weak in the collective sense and I'm inclined to wish that "general cognomen" was indeed the accepted term ("collective pseudonym" seems heavy and invented on the fly). However, my opinion as an editor of Wikipedia is properly for the birds. — MaxEnt 15:51, 24 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]