Ayn Rand

45 6.5

A Russian-born American writer who created the philosophy called Objectivism

proper noun
/eɪn rænd/

: Ayn Rand

First of all, he looked totally like an Ayn Rand hero.

Examples

I am pleased to present Ayn Rand.
Ayn Rand moved to the United States in the 1920s and became a prominent writer.
Atlas Shrugged is considered Ayn Rand's magnum opus.
Many of Ayn Rand's readers are drawn to her philosophy of individualism.
Many people admire Ayn Rand for her ideas on capitalism.
Did you read Ayn Rand's book 'Atlas Shrugged'?
So Ayn Rand getting into the movies was a goal and the most exciting thing that ever happened.

Surface Forms

Ayn Rand main

Morphology

Ayn + Rand

This is a proper name referring to a specific person; the tokens 'Ayn' and 'Rand' are not interpretable lexical constituents whose meanings combine to yield the biographical or philosophical information. Personal names are arbitrary and non-compositional across languages, so a B1 learner who only knows the constituent words would not be able to derive the MWE's meaning.

Etymology

Ayn Rand was born Alisa Rosenbaum, but she took a short, strong 'pen name' when she moved to America to work as a writer. She chose the sharp first name Ayn and the short surname Rand so readers would remember her easily, and that tough, simple name matches her bold ideas about individualism.