 In the 18th century, François-Marie Arouet adopted the mononym Voltaire, for both literary and personal use, in 1718 after his imprisonment in Paris' Bastille, to mark a break with his past.The new name combined several features.It was an anagram for a Latinized version of his family surname, "Arouet, l[e] j[eune]"; it reversed the syllables of the name of a family "château", Airvault; and it has implications of speed and daring through similarity to French expressions such as "voltige", "volte-face" and "volatile".