Six Things You Probably Didn't Know About Ayn Rand

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3. The name’s not Ann

Richard B. Levine/Newscom/File The 1957 novel Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand is seen on the shelves of a Borders bookstore in New York earlier this year. Rand's ode to capitalism is popular with conservatives and libertarians because of its laissez-faire point of view and its promotion of individualism over collectivism. But make sure to pronounce her name correctly.

Oct. 15, 2011, 11:09 a.m. ET

• By Whitney Eulich Contributor

Born Alisa Rosenbaum, Ayn Rand changed her name after moving to the US in 1926. When said correctly, Ayn should rhyme with “line.”

Been calling her “Ann” or “Ian” all these years? According to the book “Letters of Ayn Rand,” edited by Michael Berliner, Rand was addressing questions about her name as far back as 1937. In response to a fan’s letter that year, she wrote:

“… I must say that ‘Ayn’ is both a real name and an invention. The original of it is a Finnish feminine name … Its pronunciation, spelled phonetically, would be: ‘I-na.’ I do not know what its correct spelling should be in English, but I chose to make it ‘Ayn’ eliminating the final ‘a.’ I pronounce it as the letter ‘I’ with an ‘n’ added to it”

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