What is the deal with Silverberry Mouhon's name?

October 31, 2015 9:02 PM

News stories like this one say that Silverberry Mouhon is named after the author AR Silverberry. Fine. But Silverberry Mouhon was born in 1993, and according to the author's bio, AR Silverberry didn't start writing seriously until 1998 (and didn't have any novels published until 2010). So what's the deal?

Is there some other AR Silverberry? Is there some confusion in the story and Mouhon is named after some other author named Silverberry? The advantage of this theory is the story says Mouhon's dad is a fan of the author, and the author's books appear to be targeted at adolescent girls, but I can't find any other authors named Silverberry. Also, the author lives in California and the player was born in Georgia, so it seems unlikely there's a social relationship predating AR's publishing success.

posted by inkyz to Grab Bag (4 answers total)

A pen name? Selected after Silverberry Mouhon grew up, after AR Silverberry began to write?
posted by Chocolate Pickle at 10:09 PM on October 31, 2015 [2 favorites]

Perhaps he thought it sounded like a better story to be named after an author than a bush, but neglected to research when the author began to write?
posted by cecic at 10:19 PM on October 31, 2015

I'm going to bet he got sick of being asked about his name and came up with a bullshit story, either as a joke or because it sounds better than "my parents just liked the name Silverberry."
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 1:45 AM on November 1, 2015

As an aside, AR Silverberry is the pen name for Peter Adler. So, I'm betting ArbitraryandCapricious is right.
posted by bluefly at 2:41 AM on November 1, 2015