What’s in a name?

Nora Roberts (real name) writes crime fiction as J. D. Robb.
John Banville (real name) writes crime fiction as Benjamin Black.
The late Ruth Rendell (real name) wrote crime under her real name and other novels as Barbara Vine.
Agatha Christie (real name) wrote romance novels as Mary Westmacott. 

I don't know how any of them chose their pseudonymns. I only know how I chose mine - R I Olufsen. 
My name in Irish is Róisín Nic (daughter of) Amlaoibh. Were I male, my surname would be Mac  (son of) Amlaoibh.
The name is anglicised as McAuley. I've always understood it to be a Viking name.  Amlaoibh is a from the old Norse - Olaf.
So when I decided to set my crime novel, Bogman,  in Scandinavia, I chose a similarly derived name - Olufsen.

I enjoyed researching in Denmark.
I went to Silkeborg museum to see Tollund Man.  I had wanted to see him since first reading the Seamus Heaney poem which begins "Some day I will go to Aarhus......"  (He knew Tollund Man was in Silkeborg but Aarhus works better with the metre.)
I stayed in an apartment on the north coast of Zeeland and watched ships travelling up and down the sound between Denmark and Sweden. I walked the sands north of Skagen, where two seas meet -  the Skaggerak and the Kattegat.
I stayed in an apartment in Aarhus, and in the charming town of Aeroskobing on the island of Aero.
I played golf on Aero - and at another half dozen wonderful Danish courses such as Stensballegaard, Esbjerg and Rungsted. 

I'm now writing another crime novel featuring Chief Inspector Tobias Lange. (I don't say 'a second crime novel' because in my second novel, 'Meeting Point', now re-published in an e-edition, a murder investigation is a key element in the plot. And there's an element of suspense in all my novels.)

I look forward to my next visit to Denmark.