Choosing the name the world will know you by is a big decision.
It's hard to change again. Which actor had her name changed without her consent?
And what band changed its name because of race implications? Keep watching to find out.
When all is said and done, Nicki Minaj’s name will probably go down in history.
Mainly, because she was one of the first female rappers to be successful after there was a long
drought of women not being in the hip-hop spotlight. But if Minaj had it her way,
her real name Onika Tanya Maraj would go down in history, not her rap moniker. That's because,
during a 2010 interview with Trinidad and Tobago Newsday, the rapper said she
didn't care for the name "Minaj," while also explaining its origin. She said,
"I was always called Nicki at home so I was known as Nicki Maraj but my first producer
did not like Maraj and thought Minaj sounded better. [...] I still hate the name and I was
going to go back to Maraj on the album but people told me no because my fans like it."
Minaj also spoke to The Guardian in 2017 about her stage name and gave a bit more
detail about the disagreement that she had with her producer about it. During that interview,
she said they argued at the same time she was about to sign a production
deal and fought tooth and nail to keep her real name but gave in.
However, the New York-raised artist also said that Nicki "Minaj" is far different from who
she really is and she uses that reasoning to justify the name switch. She explained,
"I feel it's like one big theatre piece."
[Laughter]
Since George Floyd’s tragic death, many in the United States began re-examining their position
on race to make sure they weren't unintentionally doing anything that would be considered
insensitive or flat-out racist. The country group Lady Antebellum was among the people who said the
national conversation on race had an impact on them, and they changed their band name to Lady A.
Why? Well, the dictionary definition of the word "Antebellum" is "Existing before a war,"
and in the U.S., it's usually associated with the pre-Civil War South, where slavery
was still legal. That's an association the band's members wanted nothing to do with,
which they confirmed in a statement. The band wrote on Instagram on June 11, 2020,
"We are regretful and embarrassed to say that we did not take into account the associations
that weigh down this word referring to the period of history before The Civil War,
which includes slavery."
In that same statement, the group said they got their name from the "southern antebellum" style
home where they took their first photos. And since the name change, many have praised Lady A,
which probably makes its members feel better about the band and possibly themselves.
Anne Hathaway may have a name that's associated with successful films such as "The Princess
Diaries" movies, "The Devil Wears Prada," and "Les Misérables," which got her an Oscar
for Best Supporting Actress. But Hathaway would rather have those movies associated with another,
name because she doesn't like her own, which she admitted in January
of 2021 on "The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon." According to Hathaway,
when she was a teenage actor, she gave someone her birth name, not believing it would be the
official stage name she'd be using for the rest of her career. She explained,
"When I was 14 years old, I did a commercial, and I had to get my SAG card,
and they asked me, 'What do you want your name to be?' And I was like, 'Well,
it should be my name. My name's Anne Hathaway.' So that seemed like the right choice. But it
never occurred to me that for the rest of my life, people will call me Anne."
"The only person who ever calls me Anne is my mother,
and she only does it when she's really mad at me. Like, really mad."
So that makes the actor feel like she's in big trouble whenever someone uses that name in public.
“What? What did I do!”
Hathaway said most everyone in her personal life call her "Annie,"
and she wished others would either call her that or something else. Just not Anne.
Here's the thing about being a child entertainer: Often, that person doesn't want to do the same
thing anymore after outgrowing their cute image. But in Bow Wow's case,
he outgrew his name, which he addressed on Instagram in 2014. He wrote in the caption,
"ANNOUNCEMENT: After BET awards I will no longer go by Bow Wow!
I'm going by my real name Shad Moss. We made a lot of history as Bow Wow.
Now it's time for the next chapter and challenge. Bow Wow does not fit who I am today.
[I'm a] father, businessman, TV host, actor, and rapper! Time for Mr. Moss to take over."
But despite the rapper wanting to use his real name in entertainment,
it doesn't seem that people ever stopped using Bow Wow, whether it's journalists, radio people,
or show promoters. Proof of the latter came in 2018 when Bow toured with his former So So Def
labelmates. And 2014 wasn't the only time the rapper changed his name, he also made the switch
from Lil Bow to Bow Wow in 2002 at 15 years old. He said at that time, according to MTV,
"I changed my name because I'm getting older now and it's too
many Lil's [...] All these Lil' rappers. I'm just kind of getting real irritated by it.
I'm Bow Wow. Besides, I'm growing up, I'm not little anymore."
It took 20 years for Hoobastank's Doug Robb to realize that he regrets the band name that he
chose. In January of 2021, he posted a video of himself mouthing the words to Hoobastank's
2004 hit single "The Reason" to explain why he went with the strange name. He lip-synced,
"I'm not a perfect person."
And along with the video, Robb wrote,
"Realizing 20 years later that you named your band Hoobastank."
So, where did the name come from? Germany, to be specific and it all had to do with a
mispronunciation. Hoobastank drummer Chris Hesse said during a 2003 interview with The Post-Star,
"Doug's brother happens to be the vice president of BMW Motorcycles in Germany [...] Outside of
where he lives is this street, Hooba Street. Before Doug could pronounce the name,
he called it Hoobastank, and his brother still teases him about it."
Martin Sheen, who was born Ramón Estévez, changed his
real name of Hispanic origin to something more American-sounding to appease casting agents.
It's something he talked about with James Lipton on "Inside the Actors Studio" in 2003. He said,
"It's still Estevez, officially. I never changed it. I never will.
It's on my driver's license and passport and everything. In fact,
one of my great regrets is that I didn't keep my name as it was given to me."
In 2019, Sheen's son Emilio Estevez, who chose to keep his birth name as an actor, said he
did so at the advice of his father. Emiliio explained to Talk Stoop that his father told him,
"Don't make the same mistake I made."
Marcus Mumford, lead singer of the English rock band Mumford & Sons, wasn't thinking
about the future when he chose a band name, which is something he now regrets. He told NME in 2015,
"I definitely regret the band name.
If I'd known it was going to go this way I would have wanted to call it anything
other than my last name. [...] We thought about changing it, but it's a bit late now."
Mumford also said something similar about a year later on RadioX,
calling the band name "rubbish." He stated,
"I regret our band name. [...] You never really think about it when
you're in the pub. You've done your first rehearsal,
you've written your first song and someone's like: 'You need a band name now.'"
Yasiin Bey, the rapper known formerly as Mos Def, burst onto the rap scene
in 1998. The talented lyricist shot to global fame and not only from music,
but he also had a successful acting career. Along the way, however, Bey grew tired of the Mos Def
name and what he felt it represented, so he changed it. He told GQ in 2012,
"I began to fear that Mos Def was being treated as a product, not a person, so I've been going by
Yasiin since '99. At first it was just for friends and family but now I'm declaring it openly."
And in 2021, Bey spoke on the "People's Party Podcast" and
talked about the specific moment that he decided to change his name.
"I was at the airport once and I was coming out of the terminal, coming out of the gate
and somebody was like, 'Mos!’ There was an energy that they said it with that made me feel like,
'Oh, I'm a thing to that person. They don't know me, they know Mos' ... I almost
felt like they were shouting out a mascot or something. I was like, 'I don't like that.'"
"Human beings are a lot more
complex and dynamic than, 'This guy is this one thing,' and 'That girl is this one thing.'"
Whenever having to make a quick decision, some might've been told to just go with whatever their
heart says. But here's the thing: Hearts don't talk, regardless of what love songs tell you.
Back in 1994, the Arizona rock band Jimmy Eat World seemed to go with their heart when
having to make a last-minute decision on a band name. But it's something the
band's drummer Zach Lind seems to regret and advised others not to do. He tweeted in 2018,
"A little history on how we came up with the band name: We were rehearsing in my
garage ... and Jim [Adkins] told us we got asked to play a party in the
storage room of Name Brand Exchange in Mesa on Southern and Val Vista in [February] of 94.
So we took a break from the garage and huddled around our kitchen island and
decided to play the show but at that time, we hadn't yet sorted out a name."
Lind then said they decided on Jimmy Eat World, one of the names members Tom Linton
and Rick Burch used in their old band. About coming up with the name, Lind added,
"We discussed it for less than 5 [minutes]. So moral of the story:
Even seemingly small and insignificant decisions can be much bigger than you could imagine.
Slow down sometimes and make sure it's right."
Great advice, wouldn't you say?
What do you do when you've been working hard to make a name for yourself as an entertainer,
you've finally accomplished it, only to have that name cause controversy once it became popular?
That's exactly what happened to the Atlanta rapper known formally as Mulatto. She found
success after dropping a series of mixtapes and being on Lifetime's "The Rap Game," which she won.
Unfortunately, as her fame grew, so did the talk of how her name was offensive.
The word "mulatto" refers to a person with one Black and one white parent.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary also notes that the term is "usually offensive," and 11 Alive
points out it derives from the Spanish word for a mule, which is a half-donkey, half-horse.
Plus, it appeared that some thought the rapper was using the word as some sort
of social status symbol, something that she didn't want people to think. So she
changed her rap name to Latto in March of 2021. Latto said on Hot Freestyle,
"You might know your intentions, but these are strangers who don't know you,
never even met you in person. So you gotta hear each other out, and if you know those aren't your
intentions and that's how it's being perceived, it's like why not make a change or alter it?"
Latto celebrated the name change when she released her single "The Biggest" in May 2021
and doesn't seem to be worried about it slowing down her career. In the song, she raps
"New money, new crib, new whip, new name."
Thandiwe Newton did not consent to her name change.
In fact, it wasn't even her idea. The actor spoke about it in May of 2021 during an
interview with Vogue. She said that when she made her film debut in 1991's "Flirting,"
the spelling of her first name was changed to "Thandie" from the actual spelling,
and she then decided to keep it like that, which she regretted. But as of the Vogue interview,
Newton said that all of her films going forward will be credited under the real spelling of her
name and that her name shouldn't have been altered in the first place. Rightfully so, she said,
"That's my name. It's always been my name. I'm taking back what's mine."
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