The surprising real names of 57 celebrities

Joaquin Rafael Bottom is the third of five children, all with equally interesting names, including River (who died in 1993), Rain, Liberty, Summer, and a half-sister Jodean.

After Joaquin's parents, John Lee and Arlyn Bottom, married in 1969, the couple joined the religious cult the Children of God and traveled around South America. But they soon became disenchanted with the cult and moved back to the US in 1978, where they changed their last name to "Phoenix" to symbolize "new beginning."

Around this same time, a young Joaquin began calling himself "Leaf," desiring to have a similar nature-related name like his siblings. Leaf was the name he used as a child actor until, at age 15, he changed it back to Joaquin.

Eilish is actually one of the singer's middle names. Her actor parents wanted to name her Eilish after watching a documentary about conjoined Irish twins, Katie and Eilish Holton.

After the singer's grandfather, Bill, died, her parents decided to name her after him.

The middle name "Pirate" comes from her brother, Finneas, who gave her the nickname when they were young. It stuck.

The "Fate of the Furious" star told Conan O'Brien he changed his name while working as a bouncer at New York nightclubs. Vin is a shortened version of the actor's last name.

Diesel was a nickname from friends who said he ran on "diesel" fuel because he had so much energy.

After being born in Jerusalem, Israel, in 1981 to an Israeli gynecologist father named Avner Hershlag and American mother named Shelley Stevens (her mother's family changed their last name from "Edelstein" to "Stevens" when arriving in the US from Russia and Austria), Portman now holds dual American and Israeli citizenship.

The "Sweet Home Alabama" actress traded her first and middle name in for her mother's maiden name, "Reese."

Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta was born and raised in New York City.

In the October 2013 issue of Elle magazine the singer said she changed her name because Stefani is "a perpetually tortured artist" that she can't be in public.

That's right! The "Game of Thrones" star's real name is Christopher and he didn't even know it until age 11.

"Christopher was a bit of a tradition," Harington told Glamour in 2014. And it's not just him who goes by another name in the family. "My brother's name is Jack, but his real name is John. Kit is traditionally an offshoot of Christopher, it's just not used that often. My middle name is Catesby."

Harington says he almost thought of going by the name Kit Catesby, but ultimately decided against it.

"I nearly did, but I thought it sounded too much like a 1950s talk-show host. I was close, actually! Sometimes I think, That would have been a cool name, but Kit Harington works," he said.

The youngest of four children, Williams told the Evening Standard her nickname comes from a newspaper cartoon strip called, "The Perishers."

Chrissy Teigen's singer husband's name was given to him by his friend and poet J. Ivy who said he thought his music sounded like "one of the [old-school] legends," according to Intelius.

"It was bold and I knew people would be like 'He'd better be good if he's going to call himself John Legend,'" Legend told The New York Times in 2006. ''So I said, 'Let me go out and make the best music I can and maybe, after my career is over, I've lived up to the name.'"'

At the age of seven, Milena Markovna Kunis and her family moved from Ukraine to Los Angeles, California.

Mila's mother, Elvira, and father, Mark, soon enrolled her in acting classes and allowed Mila to shorten her name when she started booking her first roles on "Days of our Lives," "7th Heaven," and playing a young Angelina Jolie in "Gia."

The first part of the rapper's stage name came from her dog Iggy Pop. After he was bitten by a snake and got better, the singer had a name-plate necklace made.

"Everybody started to think that my name was Iggy so it kind of became my nickname and I took it on board and started rapping with it," said Azalea on Vevo's series "A.K.A."

Her grandfather suggested she needed a second name and she decided on a street name she had lived on.

"It sounds very feminine and I thought it would balance out Iggy being so masculine," said Azalea.

Cyrus' father Billy Ray gave her the nickname "Smiley" to match her cheery persona.

Over the years, the nickname became shortened to Miley. Cyrus legally changed her name in 2008.

Foxx opened up to SiriusXM in 2016 about why he picked an androgynous name. He said he had a tough time getting selected to perform at comedy clubs over women so he started putting down women's names on set lists.

"I put down all these girl's names — Stacy Brown, Tracy Green," Foxx told SiriusXM. "I put down Jamie Foxx because, you know, they would only pick, like, a few girls to go on the set and they didn't know if I was a girl or not. They just saw the name on the list."

The name that was chosen off of the list was Jamie. Foxx said he picked the name to pay homage to his favorite show, "Samford and Son," and its star, comedian and actor Redd Foxx.

"It was a tip of the hat to him, and then they chose that name, and the name stuck, and I got to be thankful to him for blazing the trail as a comedian and allowing me to sort of ride on his coattails," said Foxx.

You can listen to a snippet of his SiriusXM interview here.

"I didn't like being Ashley Frangipane," Halsey told Rolling Stone in 2016. "It was a person I thought was weak and silly and sad."

Halsey is an anagram of her first name. She came up with the name after seeing a subway stop in Brooklyn for Halsey Street.

Boldt is his mother's maiden name. The "Batman v Superman" actor's middle name was inspired by a parent's Hungarian friend.

"When I got to be in fourth or fifth grade, I accused them of being the worst namers in the world! I said, Everyone calls me Ben Gay!" Affleck told Glamour. "But she [Affleck's mother] told me that Geza was a friend of hers who died right around the time I was born, who was a Holocaust survivor in Hungary, and the most exceptional person she knew."

"He had left from a train during the Holocaust taking Jews to death camps, and he went back and saved several others returning to break them out," he continued. "She told me six million Jews were murdered and that men like him were brave and selfless. That name has never been short of a tremendous honor to me since that day."

"It was the most empowering s--- I did in 2010, for sure. I went on LegalZoom and changed my f---ing name," Ocean told Complex in 2011.

"It just felt cool. None of us are our names," he continued. "If you don't like your name then change your name. I'm only a few steps into the process, so I probably shouldn't even be talking about this, but by the beginning of summer I'll be straight. I'll be boarding planes as Christopher Francis Ocean."

Ocean filed documents to change his name in 2014. The name change was approved over a year later in April 2015.

Before she was a chart-topping singer, Perry was producing Christian music under her birth name, Kathryn Hudson. She released gospel record "Katy Hudson" under the former label Red Hill Records before adopting her mother's maiden name to avoid confusion with actress Kate Hudson.

The "Mad Max" star isn't really a Tom. It's his middle name. Hardy's father is named Edward and is a novelist. The two recently worked together on FX's eight-part TV series "Taboo."

Jefferson's nickname came after she formed a rap group with two classmates at age 14.

According to an interview with The Cut, her friends shortened her first name to give her the nickname Lissa, but then changed it to Lizzo because Jay-Z's "Izzo" was "popular at the time."

Read more: 5 things you didn't know about Lizzo

Moore kept the last name of her first husband Freddy Moore after they divorced in 1984.

Daughter Tallulah also legally changed her name to Lula. Father Bruce Willis first broke the news in 2007 on "The Late Show with David Letterman."

"She wanted me to mention here on the big show that she's legally changing her name from Tallulah to Lula, just Lula," said Willis. "She doesn't like her name."

Mars changed his Puerto Rican name "to avoid being stereotyped" into performing solely Latin and Spanish music, according to GQ.

Where did the name come from? Bruno was the nickname his father gave him at the age of 2 years old because he reminded him of his favorite wrestler Bruno Sammartino.

The singer told rap-up.com the last name was to give him an edge.

"I felt like I didn't have no pizzazz, and a lot of girls say I'm out of this world, so I was like I guess I'm from Mars."

In 2016, the singer tweeted that people called her Bacardi growing up because her sister's name is Hennessy.

"It was my Instagram name, Bacardi, Bacardi B.," the singer told Jimmy Fallon in 2017. She eventually shortened it.

"But for some reason, my Instagram kept getting deleted, and you know what, I think it was Bacardi that had something to do with it," she added. "So I just shortened it to Cardi B."

When he played wheelchair-bound Jimmy Brooks on the Canadian TV show "Degrassi," the actor went by the name Aubrey Graham. But when the Toronto native switched his career focus to rapping in 2009 after signing a recording contract with Lil Wayne's Young Money Entertainment, he started using one name only: Drake.

The Barbados singer uses her middle name on stage, but prefers when family and friends call her by her first name.

"I get kind of numb to hearing Rihanna, Rihanna, Rihanna," the singer told Rolling Stone in 2011. "When I hear Robyn, I pay attention."

The Trinidadian-born rapper's name is a combination of her first and last names. According to Billboard, Minaj went by nicknames like "Cookie" and "Harajuku Barbie" early on in her career before landing on Minaj, a name she's not crazy about.

"Somebody changed my name. One of the first production deals I signed, the guy wanted my name to be Minaj and I fought him tooth and nail. But he convinced me," Minaj told the Guardian in 2012. "I've always hated it."

Similar to Rihanna, the singer prefers going by "whatever you were calling me four years ago."

"I don't like it when my family or close friends call me Nicki Minaj," she added. "To me I'm not Nicki Minaj when I'm with them."

The rapper has said the stage name explains his split personality.

"The nickname is something I made up," said Ludacris. "Part of me is calm, cool, and collective (sic), while the other side is just beyond crazy."

Before becoming a rapper, Ludacris was known as "Chris Luva Luva" on Atlanta's Hot 97.

The "Batman" actor changed his name early in his career to avoid confusion with actor Michael Douglas and TV host Mike Douglas.

Though rumors have suggested he changed his name because he liked the sound of Diane Keaton's name, the actor told Grantland that wasn't true. He changed his name to join the union. It's believed he chose Keaton because of comedian Buster Keaton.

Stone's name change also came about because someone else already had it.

"My name was taken at the Screen Actors Guild by one of the girls on Australia's Next Top Model, when I was 16," the "La La Land" actress told Jimmy Kimmel.

Instead, she went with a name inspired partly by Spice Girl Emma Bunton.

"It's close to my real name and then also I had this little thing that recently happened with the Spice Girls talking to me," said Stone. "I didn't change it thinking one day Scary Spice would talk to me. But when I was in second grade I did ask the teacher on the first day of school to call me Emma because I always wanted to be Baby Spice."

She received a message from Mel B. during the "Amazing Spider-Man 2" press junket with a request to sing a song from the group.

Kaling told a LiveJournal for "The Office" in 2008 that no one has ever called her Vera. Her parents named her after a character from an ABC sitcom.

"I've been Mindy since I was born. When my Mom was pregnant, my parents were living in Nigeria and wanted a cute American name, because they were moving here, and they knew Mindy from 'Mork & Mindy," said Kaling. "Vera isn't just an old Russian lady's name, it's an incarnation of a Hindu goddess. But they never called me it."

Kaling acknowledged the series' impact on her life after Robin Williams' death in 2014, confirming she was named after one of the show's characters.

That's right. Fey shares the name of her "30 Rock" Liz Lemon character. Her stage name is just a shortened version of her middle name.

Cage wanted to get rid of any association to his famous uncle, Francis Ford Coppola, after spending a year living with him and his wife, Eleanor, when he was in ninth grade.

According to a 1994 profile of the actor in The New York Times, the actor was in ninth grade and he was "frustrated beyond belief" there as his grades took a tumble from straight A's to F's and he went from being "the cool guy to the geek."

The change in name was both a way for Cage to make it on his own, but also revenge, he told the NYT. The name itself was inspired both by composer and artist John Cage and the Marvel character Luke Cage.

From The New York Times:

Makkonen is The Weeknd's father's name, who, according to Rolling Stone, left when he was just 1 or 2 years old.

In a 2016 Reddit AMA, the singer said he disliked his name, and, after dropping out of school, and leaving home one weekend, he tried out the moniker.

"It sounded cool. I took out the 'e' because there was already a Canadian band named the weekend (copyright issues)," he said.

The Oscar-nominated actress told The New York Times in 2001 she decided to take up acting after a suggestion by her drama teacher. Moore didn't want to change her name but said it was too popular to stand out.

Instead, she adopted a name that honored her parents.

''There was already a Julie Smith, a Julie Anne Smith, there was everything,'' Moore told The Times. ''My father's middle name is Moore; my mother's name is Anne. So I just slammed the Anne onto the Julie. That way, I could use both of their names and not hurt anyone's feelings. But it's horrible to change your name. I'd been Julie Smith my whole life, and I didn't want to change it.''

"It's been my internet alias for a minute," said the artist in a 2019 interview with Beats 1, according to HotNewHipHop.com.

"The X wasn't included at first. It was just Lil Nas," he continued. "It was Lil Nas because when I first started rapping I wasn't as serious so it was like, 'Okay, every rapper's name is starting with Lil lately.' So I kind of got stuck with it."

He said he added the "X" when he was more serious.

"It would stand for the amount of years, I felt, until I'm at the status where I'm considered legendary," said the rapper of the meaning behind the "X."

In 2009, Caine explained re-naming himself after Humphrey Bogart's character in "The Caine Mutiny" to New York Magazine.

"Bogart was my hero, and even though he came from a sort of snobby, aristocratic family — he was a distant relation of Princess Diana — when I was a kid I thought he was a tough guy," said Caine. "Any person with my working-class background would be a villain or a comic cipher, usually badly played, and with a rotten accent. There weren't a lot of guys in England for me to look up to."

On an episode of Vevo's "A.K.A.," G-Eazy said he didn't like his first name.

"It felt like an old man's name and that's probably because I was named after my grandpa," said the rapper.

Instead, he insisted he go by his first and middle initials, G.E., growing up. It grew into G-Eazy when he started rapping, but he said he wouldn't mind transitioning to G.E. or just G at some point.

"The View" moderator didn't become Whoopi Goldberg until people noticed she had a bit of a flatulence problem and began calling her Whoopi after a whoopee cushion.

"When you’re performing on stage, you never really have time to go into the bathroom and close the door," Whoopi told the New York Times in 2008. "So if you get a little gassy, you’ve got to let it go. So people used to say to me, 'You are like a whoopee cushion.' And that’s where the name came from."

The singer changed his name to Elton Hercules John. In the movie "Rocketman," John takes his name from one of his friends and "Beatles" singer John Lennon after spotting a photo on the wall during a record label meeting.

That's not completely accurate. In a 1991 interview with Rowan Atkinson, the singer explained how he came up with the first name.

"I used to be in a band, and I wanted to become a singer in my own right, and I wanted to choose a name," said John. "And the saxophone player in the band was called Elton, so I chose that name."

He said he never considered having the name the other way around. As for his last name, according to TheWrap, the singer explained his stage name in an interview for a box set of 1990's "To Be Continued..."

"I was in Bluesology, and we were coming back from a Long John Baldry gig somewhere, and we got a bus from London airport to London and someone said, 'We've made it now, so what are you going to call yourself?'" said John.

After writing a song, the singer was told in passing he was like the "Neo" of the music industry.

"It's like you see music the way Neo sees the Matrix," Ne-Yo recalled being told by producer Deon "Big D" Evans on an episode of Vevo's "A.K.A."

At first, the singer tried to push back because he didn't want that to catch on and become a nickname. He eventually relented.

"I couldn't escape it," he said. "From that day forth, I was Ne-Yo."

When Lana Del Rey started her singing career she went by the name Lizzy Grant. You can still find early interviews and performances of her on YouTube with the name.

After her first album failed, The Guardian reported that her stage name, Lana, was chosen for her by management. In 2011, the singer told Vogue Lana Del Rey was inspired by her time in Miami.

"I wanted a name I could shape the music towards," she told Vogue. "I was going to Miami quite a lot at the time, speaking a lot of Spanish with my friends from Cuba - Lana Del Rey reminded us of the glamour of the seaside. It sounded gorgeous coming off the tip of the tongue."

The "Arrested Development" actress told The Advocate in 2005 that she changed her name legally at the age of 15 to reinvent herself after coming out as gay.

The name Portia is from a Shakespearean character in "The Merchant of Venice." She chose an Italian last name because it seemed more sophisticated.

"De Rossi because I was Australian and I thought that an exotic Italian name would somehow suit me more than Amanda Rogers," she said. "When you live in Australia, Europe is so far away and so fascinating, so stylish and cultured and sophisticated."

According to a Salon article from 2000, Walken was originally named after actor Ronald Colman.

The change in name came about after singer Monique Van Vooren, whom Walken worked for at the time, renamed him Christopher for no real apparent reason. The name stuck, though his friends still call him Ronnie.

Lorde's lengthy name comes from her Irish and Croatian descent. When Lorde's hanging out with her friends she goes by Ella. The singer told Interview Magazine Lorde's just a theatrical stage name that's not supposed to have any religious connotations. It was inspired by royalty.

"When I was trying to come up with a stage name, I thought 'Lord' was super rad, but really masculine — ever since I was a little kid, I have been really into royals and aristocracy," Lorde told Interview in 2013. "So to make Lord more feminine, I just put an 'e' on the end! Some people think it's religious, but it's not."

The Oscar-winning actress's mother and grandmother were also both named Meryl. According to Michael Schulman's biography "Her Again: Becoming Meryl Streep," Streep's mother started calling her Meryl before she "had learned to speak her name" because three Marys were a lot to have in one family.

Haggerty came up with the name Macklemore for a high school art project where he had to come up with the name of a superhero. He released his first EP, "Open Your Eyes," in 2000 under the name Professor Macklemore.

Kingsley revealed on "Inside the Actors Studio" he feared a foreign name could hurt his career.

Foster's estranged brother Buddy claims her name change to "Jodie" came as the result of a nickname, the code, "Jo D" for their mother's partner, Josephina Dominguez, in his book, "Foster Child: A Biography of Jodie Foster."

With his paternal grandparents originally immigrants from Spain and Ireland, Sheen wanted to take on a more American name. His children share the Sheen surname.

According to a 2003 "Inside the Actors Studio" interview, Martin Sheen revealed he took his name from CBS casting director Robert Dale Martin, who gave him his big break, and a Catholic televangelist, Fulton J. Sheen, whom he thought was a great actor. Unlike his son Charlie, Martin never legally changed his name.

Emilio Estevez (right), of course, kept his name.

Born in Fairfield, Connecticut, to Roman Catholic parents named Susan Jordan and Harry Hyra, Margaret Mary Emily Anne Hyra changed her name to Meg Ryan after she dropped out of NYU about one semester early to pursue her budding acting career.

"I was paying my way through school by doing commercials and things like that and one just overtook the other," she told BBC's Michael Parkinson. "Sometimes your life seems to choose you a little bit."

The U2 front man and humanitarian we all know as Bono wasn't actually born with just one name. Before he became world famous, the Irish musician was known by the name Paul David Hewson. But his wife still reminds Bono of his roots, going by the name Ali Hewson.

The name Bono was originally a nickname, short for "Bono Vox" meaning "good voice" in Latin, said to be given by his friend Gavin Friday.

The director of critically acclaimed "Her" got his pseudonym from co-workers of a Rockville BMX store because "he'd come to work without showering, and his hair was usually sticking straight up," according to New York Magazine.

The youngest nominee ever for a Screen Actors Guild Award, Hannah Dakota Fanning goes by her middle name professionally instead of her legal first name.

Fanning, whose mother Heather Arrington played professional tennis (her father, Dakota's grandfather, was NFL player Rick Arrington) and father, Steven Fanning, a former minor league baseball player, is of Irish and German ancestry.

According to "Snoop Dogg - Biography of Calvin Cordozar Broadus," the rapper's mother joked he looked like the classic "Peanuts" dog while growing up.

Appearing on an episode of Oprah's "Oprah: Where Are They Now?" in 2016, Aday got the first half of his moniker when he was four days old from his father.

"I was born bright red, so the doctor suggested that they should keep me in the hospital for a few days," said the singer, whose father had a request of the doctors. "[He said] 'I want you to name my son there ― because he looks like nine-and-a-half pounds of ground chuck ― I want you to put a name tag on the front of that plastic crib and it say 'Meat' on it.'"

And that's what they did.

Years later, when Aday was in eighth grade, the rest of his famous name was indirectly given to him by a football coach after he stepped on his foot.

According to Aday, the coach wasn't too pleased, yelling, "Get off my foot, you hunk of meat loaf."

The "Booksmart" director comes from a family of journalists who, Wilde told the Observer, often went by pen names. It seemed like a no-brainer to her to do the same.

"My mother thought it was a good idea for me as well, so I could have my own identity outside of my family. She suggested I pick something Irish and something that I'd always be inspired by," said Wilde of how she selected her last name, which was inspired by Oscar Wilde.

"Wilde is someone who I respect for so many reasons—a revolutionary, a comedian and a profound thinker. I had all these reasons—but what I didn't foresee is that people would think of it as a sexy adjective," said Wilde.

Katy Perry shared the singer's real first name in a sweet photo at Goulding's wedding to art dealer Casper Jopling. Perry referred to her friend as Elena Jopling, suggesting she's changing her last name.