fictitious name
1
7.8
- noun
- /fɪkˈtɪʃəs neɪm/
- Formal
:
nombre ficticio
- It's a fictitious name.
- using a fictitious name
Examples
-
If you were going to be a conduit for letters addressed to certain destinations that risked being intercepted by agents at the post office, you hired a mailbox under a fictitious name in a suburb far from where you lived.
Fiction book (1994) -
Participants were given fictitious names to protect their anonymity.
Academic text (2006) -
So if that means opening up fraudulent accounts, applying for credit cards under fictitious names, do whatever you need to do.
-
Bears a fictitious name or other false information.
Blog text (31) -
And since he'd been doing all this under the table, he put all the shares in this account, in this trust account, under a fictitious name.
-
Chandra Baker (fictitious name), an African American sixth grader, attends Gwynn Oak Middle School, a large urban school in the southern part of the United States.
Academic text (2008) -
The apartments were rented under a fictitious name to avoid revealing the tenants' true identities.
-
He has several profiles on social media, all created with fictitious names to maintain his privacy.
-
Many businesses operate using a fictitious name that differs from their registered legal name for branding purposes.
Synonyms
9
3.9
A made-up name someone uses to hide who they are
3
8.3
A name a company uses to do business that is different from its legal name
1
6.9
A name a business uses that is different from its legal name
1
5.6
A name a business uses that is not its legal name
Surface Forms
Morphology
The meaning is directly compositional: 'fictitious' = not real and 'name' = word(s) identifying something, so a B1 learner who knows both words will infer it means a made-up or non‑real name. Although the phrase has a particular legal use (a trade name/DBA), the core sense is transparent and predictable from the constituents.
Etymology
The noun fictitious name comes from the idea of a business using a fictitious ('made-up') name to show customers instead of its real company name. So, it means the name a company uses in public that is not its 'legal' name.