Should anthropologists continue to use pseudonyms in their writings? I joined this symposium thinking that the answer would be “no.” Yet through the writing of this essay my view changed. In what follows, I share this shift of view with insights from my research among human rights experts at the UN and NGOs, and state delegates in the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs (Halme-Tuomisaari 2017, 2018, 2020, 2021). This research is embedded in the rapidly proliferating anthropological work the processes of global governance, bureaucracy, expertise and documentary practices (Bear & Mathur 2015; Billaud & Cowan 2020; Brown, Reed & Yarrow 2017; Muller 2013; Niezen & Sapignoli 2017; Riles 2006, 2021). I conclude this essay by arguing that, when studying human rights experts, international organizations, or state actors, pseudonyms are necessary in the anthropological toolkit. They allow anthropologists to navigate between the “public” and “private” (Nader 1974, 20) while simultaneously becoming the guardians of their interlocutors’ stories (McGranahan 2020, 3). Without pseudonyms it would be impossible for anthropologists to arrive at the unique analytical insights that our discipline enables.