Today's Crossword: From Beyonce to Rajnikanth to Jungkook - what links them all?

What do English singer Adele, ancient Egyptian pharaoh Narmer and 17th-century French dramatist Moliere have in common?

Click start to play today’s Crossword and find out!

The answer is in plain sight. They are mononymous people: individuals known and addressed by a single name.

While many celebrities today – from Drake to Beyonce – prefer to use a single name to identify themselves, the practice dates back to antiquity. Ancient Greek philosophers, such as Plato and Socrates, followed the same pattern. In fact, when historians went through ancient texts, they discovered so many people with the same mononym that they would add epithets to avoid confusion, such as Zeno the Stoic and Zeno of Elea.

Artists like Michelangelo, Caravaggio, and Rembrandt, have also long shown a preference for mononyms. In France, painters were listed under their last names at the beginning of their careers in the Paris Salon, which was considered the greatest biennial art event in the western world in the 19th century. Because of this tradition, celebrated artists like Cezanne, Manet, Monet, Renoir and Degas signed their artwork with only their last names and came to be recognised by their mononyms.

Today, the music and cinema world is full of mononymous individuals. In India, film personalities like Rajnikanth, Dharmendra and Rekha are so well known, it’s almost impossible to confuse them with someone else who has the same name. In Korea, some artistes choose to leave their real names out of the spotlight altogether and choose mononyms for themselves, like singers BoA, Jungkook, Psy, Jisoo, Gummy and actress Shoo.

Can you find all the mononyms in today’s puzzle? Play today’s Crossword and let us know if you enjoyed it at games@gulfnews.com.