Originally published in Pearson's Weekly (C. Arthur Pearson Ltd.) vol.2 #72 (05 Dec 1891).
Paul Blouet has related how he came to take the name of "Max O'Rell." His grandfather, an officer in the French army, was called Max Blouet. During the war with the first Napoleon he was taken prisoner and sent to England, where he fell in love with an Irish girl O'Rell. He married her, taking her back with him to France. And so the grandson came by his pen-name, first used on the title-page of John Bull and His Island.
Lord Lytton, the British Ambassador in Paris, has written a considerable number of poems under the nom-de-plume of "Owen Meredith," which was suggested to him in rather an interesting way. Some of the coats of arms representing the pedigree of his lordship's family on the paternal side, which decorate the windows at Knebworth, are responsible for the choice. One of them was that of Owen Tudor, and the other that of Ann Meredith.
Some writers seem to have adopted a nom-de-plume merely as a whim. The lisp of a little girl (a relative), who, calling her by her first name of "Louisa," sounded it as "Weeder," gave Miss de la Ramée the hint for her pen-name of "Ouida." And the "Boz" of Charles Dickens, likewise, originated in the attempt of a younger brother to pronounce the name of "Moses."