How about it? Is Cecil a real person or a fictional character created by Ed? There seems to be some mystery surrounding his/their real identity(s). This can’t be the first time someone’s asked this, can it? 
It’s hardly the first time it’s been asked. Search “Cecil Adams Zotti” and you’ll find many more threads.
Let’s put it this way. “Cecil Adams” is a pen name. So was Mark Twain, Lewis Carroll, Ann Landers and Zane Gray. The big question is whether Cecil is a pen name for Ed, for someone else, for some group of people who contribute, or for someone who was actually named Cecil Adams but has since passed the writing on to someone else. And no one who knows is talking.
Cecil certainly isn’t a fictional character created by Ed, since there were two other editors for the Straight Dope column before him. If he is a fictional character, he was created by Mike Leneham.
Nor is it a collaborative pen name: Whenever content is contributed by any member of the staff (for instance, Una’s household electrical measurements in the latest column), it’s attributed.
How can we be sure that Ed Zotti isn’t Cecil Adams’ pen name? It makes a certain amount of sense, maybe Cecil got tired of his editors coming and going because he’s so impossible to work with - so he made up his own.
It’s so obvious, I don’t know why it took me so long to figure out.
How do we know “Ed Zotti” is a real person? :dubious:
And while we’re at it, do you pronounce it See-sill or Seh-sill?
“Cecil Adams” isn’t quite a pen name. As you can see if you scroll down to the fine print: “The Straight Dope by Cecil Adams” is a registered trademark of Creative Loafing Media, Inc. That means even though Ed has written the column for 30 years he doesn’t own the name, Creative Loafing does.
That means they own the name “The Straight Dope by Cecil Adams”. It doesn’t mean they own the name “Cecil Adams” (although they may).
There’s a list of all the SD/Cecil-related trademarks around here somewhere.
Having been reminded that it’s a registered trademark, I checked the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s database, and found this information in the record for “CECIL ADAMS”:
So there you have it: Uncle Cec is just a name.
William Poundstone respectfully blew the lid of of this one on pg 33 of 1993’s Biggest Secrets, stating that he “hated to blow a fellow *vade mecum *author’s cover”.
I don’t see how that precludes it being a collaborative pen name for others who don’t get attributed thus.
Well, OK, but who would those people be? What’s the point of having a separate category for “staff” or “science advisory board”, when the main name is itself a staff? Why not just invite those people to join the Cecil Collective, in that case?
The Reader has acknowleged that Cecil Adams is a fictitious name, most notably in the above mentioned trademark registration. The trademark is usually listed as abandoned now, because the Trademark Examining Authority refused to register “Cecil Adams” as a trademark on the grounds that a writer’s pseudonym or nom-de-plume doesn’t function as a trademark for the writing. You can read the appellate decision affirming the denial at In re Chicago Reader Inc., 12 USPQ 2d. 1079 (TTAB 1989). I’ve always wanted to go to the federal courthouse in Chicago and take a look at the pleadings in that case.
So Cecil is definitely a pseudonym, the only question is if it’s Ed’s. Some people have noticed a similarity in their writing styles, but Ed says this is merely a result of having worked together for so long.
It fooled you, didn’t it? 
As noted above, Mike Lenehan was Cecil’s first editor. Dave Kehr took over from Mike, and handed it off to Ed in 1978. If you read the author’s acknowledgment (is that what it’s called?) in the first Straight Dope book, Cecil writes “My thanks to Mike, Dave, and Ed, who slaved over my copy as if it were their own” (My italics).
Seems almost certain that Mike was the original Cecil, followed by Dave, but that Ed has been Cecil for some thirty years now.
Wait, does this mean I can publish under other people’s fictitious pseudonyms like Mark Twain and Lewis Carroll?
GASP, I was lied to. Waaaaaaaaaaaaay back on AOL, there’s was a question as to if Cecil was a real person or not. I sent off an email to…someone, don’t know who, and IIRC, the answer was “He better be real, he’s my boss”
I can confirm that, as someone who has provided information for Cecil’s columns, any significant information I have contributed to them has always been attributed to me by name. “Mailbag” columns I write as SDSAB are also attributed to me by name. To the best of my knowledge, that’s true for other Staff members as well.
All I really want to know is: when Cecil mentions personal details about himself, who’s personal details are those?
When he says he’s a southpaw/lefty, when he talks about Mrs. Adams, when he talks about taking an experiment into his kitchen or his backyard, when he talks about driving down the road …
Who is the lefty? Who’s wife is that? Who’s kitchen and backyard? Who’s car?
To me, it doesn’t matter so much who writes it, until such time as they start talking about their personal details 
Where’s everyone’s sense of child-like wonder?!
The fight against ignorance be damned, I choose to believe Cecil is a real individual who certainly isn’t Ed. A world without Unca’ Cecil is like a world without Santa Claus: a world none of us should want to live in.
I’ve always heard the name pronounced Seh-sill, ala Cecil Fields the baseball player or Cecil Rhodes of De Beers fame. (Or Cecil from Final Fantasy IV, my first exposure to the name as a kid.)