Celebrities weren’t born famous. They didn’t sing into microphones to greet the delivery room. They didn’t receive auditions on their second day of living. They didn’t make millions by the age of two weeks. They were born regular people, with regular parents, regular lives, and regular names.
As renowned celebrities of today commenced their path to stardom, many of them underwent dramatic changes to ignite their careers. The most popular trend among these stars is name modification. Why exactly do prominent figures in media alter their names?
The act of legally changing a name is prevalent among celebrities in order to better suit their performance criteria, add glamour to a once dull namesake, or simply be referred to by something catchier. Junior Katherine Elenberger believes, “Some celebrities were born with boring names, but others change their title for the better.” Unfortunately, not every superstar was lucky enough to be named something catchy like Jewel, Madonna, or Usher. Some were endowed with difficult names like Thomas Cruise Mapother IV, who later became one of the top 100 movie actors of all time: Tom Cruise.
Before bona-fide superstar Kirk Douglas enlisted in the U.S. Navy, he answered to the name Issur Demsky. Box-office greats including Natalie Portman, Burl Ives, and Judy Garland were all born with names unaware to the general public. Musicians such as Sting, Pink, and Bono ditched their birth names for these catchy, monosyllabic names. Hayden Siegfried, sophomore, thinks, “Musicians with simple names are sure to earn a lot of fans.”
Some celebrities, however, were required to change their names due to the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Regulations. Like other guilds and associations that represent actors, SAG rules stipulate that no two members may have identical working names. Junior Ben Otwell feels, “I wouldn’t want to change my name, even if it means adding an initial or making something up.” Since the names Michael Fox and Michael Douglas were already occupied by members in the guild, Michael Keaton and Michael J. Fox changed their last name and middle initial respectively.
For convenience purposes, it’s wise for stars like Albert Brooks (whose birth name was Albert Einstein) to adjust their names so as to spare audiences from confusion. Much to the dismay of his parents, Richard Starkey would have been unable to stand against Beatles hysteria, thus making Ringo Starr an adequate choice for fame. In some circumstances, actors such as Nicholas Cage and Emilio Estevez changed their surnames to limit the association between them and legendary family members.
Regardless of the cause of change, the celebrities of this era were born with different pasts, and their original names reflect their pre-fame lifestyles.