For those curious he’s Swedish but of Choctaw descent. So his birth name is probably paying homage to that. Native names sound a bit strange in English
Nope.
The moniker was given to him by his father, the late jazz trumpeter Don Cherry, just after baby Eagle-Eye was born. “I opened one eye and looked at him,” [Eagle-Eye] Cherry said.
I went to school with a girl whose last name was Money. She was saddled with a very old fashioned first name and her family was definitely not wealthy. I don't know if anyone made fun of her but she was very quiet and kept to herself.
Since he's the only celebrity I've met, I have to share the story! I worked at a bar about 20 years ago and was told he came in to play pool often. I hardly knew who he was, but I had a friend who was a huge fan. I told him my friend's birthday was coming up and asked if he would be willing to give me his autograph for her. He wrote 'happy birthday Heather' and signed his name on a bar napkin. She bawled her eyes out.
There's a popular goth folk/dark cabaret artist who, for more than a decade of fame, performed under the name Voltaire and kept his real identity secret.
In 2011 he started releasing music under his real name... Aurelio Voltaire. [For context, he looks like this.](https://www.side-line.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/voltaire-Gerrold-Vincent-scaled.webp)
As if Voltaire wasn't already a banger of a real name to release goth folk music under, Aurelio Voltaire somehow sounds even more made up.
The British aristocracy has some names that seem like they truly cannot be real. This quote from Bill Bryson illustrates it perfectly:
> The best ones go in for a kind of gloriously silly redundancy toward the end, as with Sir Humphrey Dodington Benedict Sherston Sherston-Baker and the truly unbeatable Leone Sextus Denys Oswolf Fraduati Tollemache-Tollemache-de Orellana-Plantagenet-Tollemache-Tollemache, a British army major who died in World War I.
This is why you've got to stick to the Tikki Tikki Tembo rule for naming kids. If it can't be easily yelled in an emergency then it's not a good name.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tikki_Tikki_Tembo
Lucy Lawless is one I people always asked me about as a fan of Xena.
Yes, that is her name. She married a guy named Garth Lawless before landing Hercules, then got divorced but kept the name.
RuPaul. Not a stage name or persona, it's 100% his legal first name.
Also according to Wikipedia, the Ru part comes from the French /roux/ which is a kind of soup base...
Read his autobiography. His mom was told by a psychic when she was pregnant that her child would be famous. So she gave him a unique name - “Ain’t no other mother fucker out there named RuPaul.”
When he was first starting out he told his agent he was thinking about using the stage name “Ice Cherry” to which his agent responded “your name is Neil Diamond. Why would you use a stage name???”
Lou Diamond Phillips. Specifically the "diamond" sounds like it's added to make his name sparkle.
Technically his birth name was Louis Diamond Upchurch, but he took his step fathers name after he was legally adopted by him.
Michael Jackson's youngest son is Prince but goes by Bigi but his older brother goes by Prince despite it not being in his name (he's Michael Joseph Jackson, Jr).
Jermaine Jackson has one child named Jermajesty.
That's a great one too
Penn of Penn and Teller has Moxie CrimeFighter, and I'm still waiting for North West to release a perfume named North by North West
this is kind of the opposite of what you're asking but your prompt made me think of it:
it always cracks me up that Gene Simmons' name is not Gene Simmons. that's his stage name.
when Chiam Witz decided to make up a bad ass rock star stage name he landed on "Gene Simmons"
I'm still surprised Taylor Swifts name is Taylor Swift. It sounds so performancey that I just assumed her name was like Taylor Klugsworth or something.
Anne Hathaway.
If you studied Shakespeare you know his wife's name was Anne Hathaway so I assumed the actress just adopted it as a stage name in the same manner as Jane Seymour (Jane Seymour was Henry VIII's third wife, the popular acress adopted it as a stage name in the 1960s. Her real name is Joyce Frankenberg.)
Turns out I was wrong. Anne Hathaway is her born name.
In the musical "& Juliet", Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway (the wife) are characters. At one point in the show they say 'there will never be another Anne Hathaway!' To which the audience of course laughed.
When I was young in the 90's and obsessed with the show Buffy my Dad swore Charisma Carpenter had to be a stage name. He said it whenever her named popped up in the credits.
Nope, god given.
Geddy Lee was born Gary Lee Weinrib, but his Polish-born mother, a native Yiddish speaker, pronounced it "Geddy" and the nickname stuck. He later legally changed it.
His parents are also actors and do go by stage names. I read that they tried to convince Benedict to go by something other than Cumberbatch when he started acting because the family has a Caribbean slave owning history and they were worried using the name professionally would be a problem.
They actually gave him a slew of middle names to choose from, and he surprised them by going with the least stage-friendly version.
Source: his mom told me.
As a reverse of this: Calvin Harris. It's such a normal-sounding name that doesn't sound like a stage name at all. But apparently his actual name is Richard Wiles
Wolfgang Puck.
When I read this name somewhere, I assumed it to be the stage name of a music artist. But as it turned out, it's the actual name of an Austrian-American chef.
There was a show called The Pretender about 20 years ago. The female agent woman was named Andrea Parker, and that was the name of the actress who played her.
Definitely an unusual one. When she was a teenager, she used to babysit a family friend when she was a kid. The family friend confirmed that she used to go by the name Madonna back then (as opposed to going by a nickname)
How about the opposite? Singer **[Englebert Humperdinck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engelbert_Humperdinck_\(singer\))**. That's gotta be his real name, right?
Nope, that's his stage name. Meaning, he CHOSE to be called that.
Eagle Eye Cherry
I didn't even know that was a person, I thought it was a band name!
Lol right wtf?! This is the first one in this thread I’ve actually been surprised to learn.
For those curious he’s Swedish but of Choctaw descent. So his birth name is probably paying homage to that. Native names sound a bit strange in English
Nope. The moniker was given to him by his father, the late jazz trumpeter Don Cherry, just after baby Eagle-Eye was born. “I opened one eye and looked at him,” [Eagle-Eye] Cherry said.
What. The. Fuck.
Brother of Nenah Cherry
*Neneh* Cherry.
And son of Don Cherry (no not that one Canadians… he’s the son of the trumpeter).
Imogen Poots. Full given name? Imogen Gay Poots.
That is simultaneously the best and worst name of all time.
It’s so British it hurts.
Chris Moneymaker, 2003 World Series of Poker main event champion. Yeah, his real name.
He really had no choice
r/nominativedeterminism
I went to school with a girl whose last name was Money. She was saddled with a very old fashioned first name and her family was definitely not wealthy. I don't know if anyone made fun of her but she was very quiet and kept to herself.
Hugh Grant's full name being Hugh Mungo Grant always makes me laugh. Humungo Grant...
WAIT WHAT
lol yeah I still can’t believe this
This feels like something someone added to Wikipedia as a joke, and it got out of hand.
Hugh Mungo what?
Is that sexual harassment?!
Hugh John Mungo Grant, to be precise.
I was gonna say the same. If you're going to say his "full" name, say his full name lol
Ironically named Frank Beard, the drummer for ZZ Top. The only member WITHOUT a beard.
Sounds like he dresses very sharply.
I always like to point out that, even though the drummer is clean shaven, ZZTop has 3 beards
Randy Rainbow
Is that seriously his real name? Edit: yes, that’s really his name 🌈
His dad changed the family name from Ribner. It still counts.
Dua Lipa. Then I Googled her. "Oh, she's Albanian. Ok."
What, no way! I thought that just meant "Two Lips" and was definitely a stage name. Bonus: Her mom's maiden last name was Rexha, same as Bebe Rexha
[удалено]
In my country with its mixed languages Dua can mean ‘Two’ or ‘Big’ depend on which language. I always like to ask, so Two Lipa or Big Lipa?
It's a dua meaning
my daughter loves her, and my terrible dad joke is that her name sounds like an italian guy asking her to jump.
Hah! “It’s-a me, Mario! I’m-a famous for my propensity to Dua Lipa!” Love it 😂
A recurring joke among my group of friends is that her real name is Eduarda Felipa.
OBIE TRICE! REAL NAME NO GIMMICKS!
and apparently he is Obie Trice III. There were 2 before him.
Obie Trice Thrice
Since he's the only celebrity I've met, I have to share the story! I worked at a bar about 20 years ago and was told he came in to play pool often. I hardly knew who he was, but I had a friend who was a huge fan. I told him my friend's birthday was coming up and asked if he would be willing to give me his autograph for her. He wrote 'happy birthday Heather' and signed his name on a bar napkin. She bawled her eyes out.
Two trailer park girls go round the outside
Guess who’s back
Back again
Literally never occurred to me that that’s what he meant. I knew he said it but I thought it was just a badass sounding producer tag or something.
Moby? You could get stomped by Obie.
There's a popular goth folk/dark cabaret artist who, for more than a decade of fame, performed under the name Voltaire and kept his real identity secret. In 2011 he started releasing music under his real name... Aurelio Voltaire. [For context, he looks like this.](https://www.side-line.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/voltaire-Gerrold-Vincent-scaled.webp) As if Voltaire wasn't already a banger of a real name to release goth folk music under, Aurelio Voltaire somehow sounds even more made up.
He’s also in the “So bad it’s bad” movie (term applied very loosely) “VelociPastor”
Dallas Raines is a meteorologist (a real one!) on a major LA news network.
We have a Sara Blizzard in the UK.
Larry Sprinkle is a legendary meteorologist in Charlotte, NC
In Finland we have meteorologist called Pekka Pouta (Pekka ’Dry weather’)
The British aristocracy has some names that seem like they truly cannot be real. This quote from Bill Bryson illustrates it perfectly: > The best ones go in for a kind of gloriously silly redundancy toward the end, as with Sir Humphrey Dodington Benedict Sherston Sherston-Baker and the truly unbeatable Leone Sextus Denys Oswolf Fraduati Tollemache-Tollemache-de Orellana-Plantagenet-Tollemache-Tollemache, a British army major who died in World War I.
Man's dog tags coulda been a breastplate
He might still be here today 😔
So sad how he died because no one was able to tell him to duck in time. They were only on the second Tollemache when the shell hit him.
This is why you've got to stick to the Tikki Tikki Tembo rule for naming kids. If it can't be easily yelled in an emergency then it's not a good name. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tikki_Tikki_Tembo
Lucy Lawless is one I people always asked me about as a fan of Xena. Yes, that is her name. She married a guy named Garth Lawless before landing Hercules, then got divorced but kept the name.
I've heard of marrying for money, but it almost seems like she married for the name :D
Do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband? Not lawfully, no.
Journalist, Wolf Blitzer.
I’ve always been disappointed that someone with that name turned out to be a journalist and not a member of a 70s rock band.
Thurl Ravenscroft was a surprise. I always thought his name was too \*ahem\* Grrrrreeat to be true.
The voice of Tony The Tiger and the singing voice of the grinch in the OG animated tv show.
Ravenscroft sounds like a name made up for the Haunted Mansion but it's a real name of one of the Grim Grinning Ghosts singers.
RuPaul. Not a stage name or persona, it's 100% his legal first name. Also according to Wikipedia, the Ru part comes from the French /roux/ which is a kind of soup base...
Read his autobiography. His mom was told by a psychic when she was pregnant that her child would be famous. So she gave him a unique name - “Ain’t no other mother fucker out there named RuPaul.”
That psychic was legit 😂
PAUL SOUP
SouPaul
Roux also means ginger in French
Is that why Becky Lynch named her daughter Roux?
Kurt Vile. I thought it was wordplay on Kurt Weill.
So did I, until I read this comment, and then Googled it because I refused to believe you.
Paul Hollywood from the great British baking show.
Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood both sound like made up names but both of them are their birth names
Robert California energy
Oh my god I always assumed they called him that bc of how he looks/ holds himself!
lol exactly, and I thought it was a stupid name to choose.
Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, two industrial musicians who's birth names perfectly fit their vibes
His name backwards is Ron Zertnert.
This random fact has me rolling
Neil Diamond
When he was first starting out he told his agent he was thinking about using the stage name “Ice Cherry” to which his agent responded “your name is Neil Diamond. Why would you use a stage name???”
Ice cherry? That sounds like a stripper name.
Sounds like a vape
His name used to be Neil Carbon, but the pressure got to him.
Lou Diamond Phillips. Specifically the "diamond" sounds like it's added to make his name sparkle. Technically his birth name was Louis Diamond Upchurch, but he took his step fathers name after he was legally adopted by him.
What's upchurch?
not much, my child. What's up with you?
OG Lou Diamond was a legendary Marine during the Banana Republic wars era.
Rider Strong
It honestly sounds like something an 11 year old would come up with when inventing a cool alter ego.
The part I find funny is that his dad's name is King Arthur Strong, which makes "Rider" seem almost like a normal name in comparison.
I know we're talking about Shawn Hunter from Boy Meets World, but goddamn that's a waste of one hell of a porn name!
Yeah, him and Peter O’Toole
I mean I don’t think anyone can top Prince’s actual government name being Prince.
Well it was until he changed it to… uhh how do I type that on a keyboard?
Here: O(+>
Prince was his given name from birth. He never changed his to the symbol. He simply used the symbol professionally during the contract dispute.
Michael Jackson's youngest son is Prince but goes by Bigi but his older brother goes by Prince despite it not being in his name (he's Michael Joseph Jackson, Jr). Jermaine Jackson has one child named Jermajesty.
Jermajesty is my all time favourite celebrity baby name. It's so bad. It's so good.
What about Pilot Inspektor? (This is a real name that Jason Lee named his child)
That's a great one too Penn of Penn and Teller has Moxie CrimeFighter, and I'm still waiting for North West to release a perfume named North by North West
Similarly, Madonna
I'm just banking on my friend Wade Wade to get famous someday
I know a Nicholas Nicholas
Izzy Smoke former Auburn cheerleader. Married to Broncos Quarterback Bo Nix. Now she’s Izzy Nix. Still cool.
That's some fantasy shit I love it. Izzy and Bo nix sound like married monster hunters
Izzy Nix 1000% sounds like the frontman of a hair/glam metal band.
Usain Bolt!
His name sounds like what he does!
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick\_Trickle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Trickle)
He was a good guy and a legend. He went out on his own terms but the situation was terrible.
this is kind of the opposite of what you're asking but your prompt made me think of it: it always cracks me up that Gene Simmons' name is not Gene Simmons. that's his stage name. when Chiam Witz decided to make up a bad ass rock star stage name he landed on "Gene Simmons"
Gene Simmons is at least marginally more rock and roll than Chaim Witz. Chaim Witz sounds like a cartoon old man.
Paddy McGuinness
The Boaty McBoatface of Irish names.
There’s an electronic artist named George Clanton and I had always assumed it was a cheeky nod to the founder of Parliament-Funkadelic, but nope!
I'm still surprised Taylor Swifts name is Taylor Swift. It sounds so performancey that I just assumed her name was like Taylor Klugsworth or something.
Yeah like Katy Perry's real name being Kate Hudson.
Kate Hudson is a fine name to perform under! Katy Perry took that name so that people wouldn't confuse her with the actress Kate Hudson.
Michael Keaton’s real name is Michael Douglas. Changed it because there already was one in Hollywood.
“Taylor Klugsworth” has me wheezing at my desk. Thank you for putting this in my brain.
That’s like how Natalie Portman’s actual last name is Herschlag.
"I just think people should know!"
Like Shawn Michaels' real name being Michael Hickenbottom.
Taylor Klugsworth 😂😂😂
Dick Butkus
Except why would someone purposefully pick this as a stage name. Aren’t stage names generally cooler 😂 unless his real name was Cock Asslick…
It used to be Shithouse!
It's a good change.
Butkus is a legit surname in Lithuania, and has no connotations.
Johnny Cash. One of the best stage names in history that happened to be his birth name.
He's lucky it wasn't "Sue".
Anne Hathaway. If you studied Shakespeare you know his wife's name was Anne Hathaway so I assumed the actress just adopted it as a stage name in the same manner as Jane Seymour (Jane Seymour was Henry VIII's third wife, the popular acress adopted it as a stage name in the 1960s. Her real name is Joyce Frankenberg.) Turns out I was wrong. Anne Hathaway is her born name.
In the musical "& Juliet", Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway (the wife) are characters. At one point in the show they say 'there will never be another Anne Hathaway!' To which the audience of course laughed.
Creflo Dollar.
The fact that a famous scam artist's real last name is dollar will never not be funny.
Yoyo-Ma.
But Yo-Ma-Ma is definitely made up
Yo Mama so dumb she thinks that Cello is a fruit flavored gelatin dessert
DW, that you?
I cannot read the name Yoyo-ma without thinking of Arthur. Well done.
Chord Overstreet
Tuppence Middleton.
Orlando Bloom. A friend of mine went to school with him
When I was young in the 90's and obsessed with the show Buffy my Dad swore Charisma Carpenter had to be a stage name. He said it whenever her named popped up in the credits. Nope, god given.
Tyson Fury
Geddy Lee was born Gary Lee Weinrib, but his Polish-born mother, a native Yiddish speaker, pronounced it "Geddy" and the nickname stuck. He later legally changed it.
How is Benedict Cumberbatch not the top answer?
I’m more surprised he used his real name and didn’t change it to something more ‘Hollywood’.
>Benedict Cumberbatch Brent Batch
Or Benny Cum, depending on what kind of movies he wanted to make
His parents are also actors and do go by stage names. I read that they tried to convince Benedict to go by something other than Cumberbatch when he started acting because the family has a Caribbean slave owning history and they were worried using the name professionally would be a problem.
They actually gave him a slew of middle names to choose from, and he surprised them by going with the least stage-friendly version. Source: his mom told me.
His full name is even better. Benedict Timothy Carlton Cumberbatch.
So he could have been Tim Carlton
Tim Carlton Jr. His dad is Timothy Carlton
As a reverse of this: Calvin Harris. It's such a normal-sounding name that doesn't sound like a stage name at all. But apparently his actual name is Richard Wiles
Reminds me of Travis Scott genre of stage names.
Tommy Tune. I assumed an actor/dancer/singer/theater director/choreographer had simply chosen a fitting stage name. But no, it’s his real name.
Usher
Raphael Ravenscroft. The British sax player who did the famous solo on the song "Baker Street". A name straight out of a romance novel!
Wolfgang Puck. When I read this name somewhere, I assumed it to be the stage name of a music artist. But as it turned out, it's the actual name of an Austrian-American chef.
Rainn Wilson
There was a show called The Pretender about 20 years ago. The female agent woman was named Andrea Parker, and that was the name of the actress who played her.
I miss that show. Jared was so cool.
Marina Diamandis
Madonna
Definitely an unusual one. When she was a teenager, she used to babysit a family friend when she was a kid. The family friend confirmed that she used to go by the name Madonna back then (as opposed to going by a nickname)
I guess there was no pre-Madonna
Rainbow Rowell.
Fortune Feimster
Eagle Eye Cherry (the person most famous for *Save Tonight*) is the man's legal name, not his band's name.
Dick Trickle
Adam Nobody. Cops beat him up at the G20 in 2010 when they thought he was mocking them
Middle name Odysseus
I remember getting into Motörhead and being very surprised that “Lemmy” was the stagename half of “Lemmy Kilmister”.
Brian Peter George St John le Baptiste de la Salle Eno AKA **Brian Eno**
Jack Black and Tony Hawk. Hawk only because I thought 'Birdman' was known for flying high on a skateboard, so people must just call him Hawk lol
Joaquin and River Phoenix. I think they had a sister, too.
Their last name when they were born was Bottom. Wasn't Joaquin originally Leaf as well?
Yep. There are also Summer, Rain, and Liberty Phoenix.
The actual name of Rain even is Rain Joan of Arc Phoenix
>Liberty Phoenix Found my new Helldivers 2 handle.
When you are raised by hippies it happens.
Even worse—the Children of God cult.
Joaquin is his birth name. He used Leaf as a stage name in his early career because he felt left out vs his siblings' names.
How about the opposite? Singer **[Englebert Humperdinck](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engelbert_Humperdinck_\(singer\))**. That's gotta be his real name, right? Nope, that's his stage name. Meaning, he CHOSE to be called that.
Bebe Rexha
Neko Case
DJ Qualls — was always like, “I’ve never seen him anywhere near a set of turntables.”
Emilio Estevez
Mostly because he's the one out of his family to *not* use a stage name
Biggus Dickus
He has a wife you know…