I remember being told that in the ancient Greek city states; a man killed the ruler. When he was asked why he did it, he said so that his name would be remembered forever more. To punish him (along with giving him the death penalty), they decreed that his name be removed from all documents, all buildings, never to be spoken again!
Today, we know him only as “Anonymous” which is where that word received its meaning.
I have tried to verify this on the web without success.
Anonymous is just an adjective (derived from Greek) that means “having no name”; it’s not the “name” of some specific namless person.
This sounds like a garbled variant of the story of the destruction of the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, one of the Seven Wonders of the World. It was burned to the ground by a madman; when asked why he had done such a terrible thing, destroying a great work of art (not to mention a temple to a goddess), he replied that he wanted to be remembered forever. It was immediately decreed that all records of the name of the arsonist be destroyed, in order to foil his megalomaniac goal (or so the story goes).
History records his name as Herostratus.
I’m pretty sure Anonumous is the guy who donated the sperm for my moms in-vitro…
Uh, nevermind.