In 1805, bibliographer Antoine-Alexandre Barbier published the first volume of his famous Dictionnaire des ouvrages anonymes. In it, he revealed thousands of disguised authors’ identities, with the aim of correcting and adding to library collections: a good third of them, according to him, were anonymous or pseudonymous. The Dictionnaire sparked a “hunt for the anonymous” that was to become a popular pastime among bibliophiles. A fellow bibliographer, Pieter Van Thol, nevertheless claimed to have priority over the subject and these discoveries. A quarrel ensued: to whom did the anonymous belong ? What value should be placed on identity in an age when civil status and intellectual property were still in their infancy ? What was the function of the author’s name in the early 19th century ? To answer these questions, this article will make extensive use of correspondence between Barbier and Van Thol, their respective works, newspapers and legal texts. It will demonstrate the inconstancy of the relationship with civil identity at that time, illustrated by the surprising uses of the author’s name in scholarly circles: as a mark of identity, a simple scientific fact or, rather, a polite formula and a bargaining chip.