What was O. Henry's full name?

Search: o henry

Why: I experienced a modern "Gift of the Magi."

Answer: His real name was William Sydney Porter! His father's name was Algernon, which I have only ever heard as a name once before.

While imprisoned for embezzlement for 5 years, he had 14 stories published under various pseudonyms. The name "O. Henry" first appeared on a story called "Whistling Dick's Christmas Stocking" in December 1899. A friend would forward his stories to publishers, who had no idea he was in prison.

Stories of origin:

Porter gave various explanations for the origin of his pen name. In 1909 he gave an interview to The New York Times, in which he gave an account of it:

It was during these New Orleans days that I adopted my pen name of O. Henry. I said to a friend: "I'm going to send out some stuff. I don't know if it amounts to much, so I want to get a literary alias. Help me pick out a good one." He suggested that we get a newspaper and pick a name from the first list of notables that we found in it. In the society columns we found the account of a fashionable ball. "Here we have our notables," said he. We looked down the list and my eye lighted on the name Henry, "That'll do for a last name," said I. "Now for a first name. I want something short. None of your three-syllable names for me." "Why don’t you use a plain initial letter, then?" asked my friend. "Good," said I, "O is about the easiest letter written, and O it is."

A newspaper once wrote and asked me what the O stands for. I replied, "O stands for Olivier the French for Oliver." And several of my stories accordingly appeared in that paper under the name Olivier Henry.

Writer and scholar Guy Davenport offers another explanation: "[T]he pseudonym that he began to write under in prison is constructed from the first two letters of Ohio and the second and last two of penitentiary."

Source: Wikipedia

The More You Know: In 1904, he coined the term "banana republic" in his book of short stories, "Cabbages and Kings," based on an earlier trip to Honduras. This is a pejorative term for "a country that is politically unstable, dependent on limited agriculture (like bananas), and ruled by a small, self-elected, wealthy, and corrupt clique."