10 celebrities who changed their name for surprising reasons
10 celebrities who changed their name for surprising reasons
Brianna ZiglerFri, May 29, 2026 at 7:16 PM UTC
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Jamie Foxx, Andy Samberg, and Michael Keaton
Credit: Marc Piasecki/Getty; Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty; Marilla Sicilia/Archivio Marilla Sicilia/Mondadori Portfolio via Getty
One of the best fun facts to throw out at parties is that Nicolas Cage is actually a member of the esteemed Coppola family, which includes directors Sofia Coppola and Francis Ford Coppola, and actor Jason Schwartzman.
However, Cage changed his stage moniker from Nicolas Kim Coppola to Nicolas Cage early on in his career in order to distinguish himself from his famous clan. Recently, he made headlines for having made that change legally binding.
“I am Nick Cage. I changed my name legally last year,” the Longlegs actor told Variety. “I'm Nick Cage in life, and I'm Nick Cage on camera. ‘Tis better to be the patriarch of my own little family than the clown cousin on the margins of someone else's, so I decided I'm going to bring it on and be ‘Cage.’”
But Cage is far from the only big name to have been born with a different one, and sometimes celebs choose new aliases for reasons a bit more intriguing than simply being a nepo baby.
Below, you’ll find 10 celebrities whose name change origins may surprise you.
Andy Samberg
Andy Samberg attends the premiere of Searchlight Pictures' 'The Roses' in 2025
Credit: Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty
Some celebs prefer their middle name to their first, while others take on a stage name just to sound cooler. But Andy Samberg revealed in an interview on The Howard Stern Show in 2016 that he changed his name to “Andy” for an amazing reason: He was a child and he just kinda felt like it.
Born David Samberg, the SNL and Brooklyn Nine-Nine alum was just 5 years old he decided he liked the name “Andy” better than his given name. “For some reason, when I was 5, I got it in my head that it should be Andy. And then I told my mom and she was just like: ‘OK!’” he told Stern.
David was actually his grandfather’s name, so he admitted jokingly that “it was kind of sh----” that he changed it.
Joe Hill
Joe Hill at the premiere of 'Black Phone 2' in 2025
Credit: Steve Granitz/FilmMagic
“Joe Hill” might seem like an unassuming name, but its owner comes from actual literary royalty. Hill’s birth name is really Joseph Hillström King, and his father is none other than horror maestro Stephen King. Most writers would be happy to coast on a famous surname, but Hill chose a different route.
In a profile for GQ, the Black Phone author explained that his name change ensured he could get his work out on its own merit, not that of his famous father. He wanted to get published “for the right reasons — because someone liked it, not because someone liked [his] dad."
Jamie Foxx
Jamie Foxx at a screening for 'Coulda Been Love' season 2 in 2026
Credit: Jerritt Clark/Getty
The name “Jamie Foxx” seems too stage-ready to be real, and it isn't. Foxx's birth name is Eric Bishop, and his reason for the change was tactical. When Foxx was starting out on the open mic circuit doing stand-up routines, he noticed that female comedians often got to go up first.
In an interview on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in 2018, Foxx revealed he intentionally changed his name to “Jamie” to make it sound gender-neutral, hoping to increase his odds that he’d be allowed to perform earlier in the night. The “Foxx” surname was a nod to comedian Redd Foxx.
Ultimately, the performer largely shifted from comedy to acting, but he kept the stage name.
Whoopi Goldberg
Whoopi Goldberg at the 2026 Disney Upfront at NYC's Javits Center
Credit: TheStewartofNY/WireImage
Before Whoopi Goldberg was headlining classic films like Sister Act and The Color Purple, she was Caryn Johnson from New York City. Early in her career, she took on the name Whoopi Goldberg, and it stuck.
But where did such a distinctive name come from? Well, it might tickle you to learn that “Whoopi” didn't stem from the affirmative exclamation it sounds like, but instead from the whoopee cushion. She told the story during a 2024 appearance on Late Night with Seth Meyers in 2024. Her mother then convinced her to use “Goldberg” as her last name, so people would take her seriously.
As it turns out, Goldberg was historically prone to passing gas, which her own granddaughter, Amara Skye, admitted in her confessional on the reality show Claim to Fame.
Skye explained to the viewers that her grandma got her name because “she likes to fart a lot,” recollecting a particularly funny, flatulence-related story when Goldberg was in an elevator with Robin Williams and Billy Crystal.
“I guess they were Dutch oven-ing each other, just basking in the ambience of farts,” said Skye.
Michael Keaton
Michael Keaton at the Venice International Film Festival in 2024
Credit: Marilla Sicilia/Archivio Marilla Sicilia/Mondadori Portfolio via Getty
Born with the last name Douglas, Michael Keaton can no longer remember where exactly he picked up his stage surname, but when the Beetlejuice actor was starting out in Hollywood, the Screen Actors Guild already had a Michael Douglas registered: the Wall Street actor and son of Hollywood icon Kirk Douglas.
Since the union prohibits actors from sharing the same name, Keaton needed to go by a different one. The rumor is that he picked it out from a phone book, although the actor admitted that, at this point, he’s not quite sure if that’s the truth.
“I was looking through — I can’t remember if it was a phone book,” Keaton recalled to PEOPLE. “I must’ve gone, ‘I don’t know, let me think of something here.’ And I went, ‘Oh, that sounds reasonable.’”
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However, in this same 2024 interview, Keaton expressed the desire to start utilizing his birth name. “I said, ‘Hey, just as a warning, my credit is going to be ‘Michael Keaton Douglas,’” he explained, in reference to his directing credit on the movie Knox Goes Away. However, “it totally got away from me. And I forgot to give them enough time to put it in and create that. But that will happen,” he promised.
Portia de Rossi
Portia de Rossi at the 77th Annual Golden Globe Awards in 2020
Credit: Daniele Venturelli/WireImage
You might be shocked to discover that the European-tinged name “Portia de Rossi” hails from the much more ordinary “Amanda Rogers.” De Rossi, who is best known for playing Lindsay Bluth on Arrested Development, legally changed her name when she was just 15 years old.
After struggling for years with issues related to her sexual identity and self-esteem, de Rossi felt that her path to self-actualization started with something as simple as what people called her.
Speaking in an interview withAdvocate in 2005, de Rossi explained, “When I was 15, I changed it legally. In retrospect, I think it was largely due to my struggle about being gay. Everything just didn't fit, and I was trying to find things I could identify myself with, and it started with my name.”
She ended up going with “Portia de Rossi” by combining two different sources. She chose “Portia” because of the wealthy heiress character of the same name in William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. Meanwhile, “de Rossi” just felt “exotic” to her.
“I was Australian, and I thought that an exotic Italian name would somehow suit me more than Amanda Rogers. When you live in Australia, Europe is so far away and so fascinating, so stylish and cultured and sophisticated,” she said.
River and Joaquin Phoenix
Joaquin and River Phoenix cooking at their home in Los Angeles circa 1985
Credit: Dianna Whitley/Getty
While River and Joaquin are indeed unique first names for the siblings, the surname “Phoenix” was given to them by their hippie parents.
In the late ‘70s, River and Joaquin’s parents, Arlyn and John, changed their last name from Bottom to Phoenix after leaving the Children of God religious group, for whom they did missionary work.
According to the brothers' sister, Rain Phoenix, in a 2011 profile for The Guardian, her parents chose the striking surname as a symbol of change and rebirth, inspired by the mythical bird that rises from the ashes. It coincided with the family's departure from the Children of God and subsequent relocation to L.A., where Arlyn and John set about helping their kids become stars.
Miley Cyrus
Miley Cyrus attends the iHeartRadio Music Awards at the Dolby Theatre in 2026
Credit: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic
Destiny Hope Cyrussounds like a name befitting a pop star, but it isn’t the one that called to Miley Cyrus. She was born with the name Destiny Hope due to her parents’ firm belief that she was destined for great things (and, well, they weren’t wrong).
"My parents thought it was my destiny to bring hope to the world,” she explained to David Letterman in 2024.
However, Cyrus’ childhood nickname was “Smiley,” and Smiley became Miley, and that ended up being the name that stuck. In 2008, at the age of 15, Cyrus legally changed her name from Destiny Hope to Miley Ray — the “Ray” being in honor of her father, Billy Ray Cyrus.
Winona Ryder
Winona Ryder at a London photocall for 'Beetlejuice Beetlejuice' in 2024
Credit: Kate Green/Getty
Before Winona Ryder was stealing hearts in movies like Heathers (1989), Edward Scissorhands (1990), and Reality Bites (1994), she was Winona Horowitz. She was named after the city of Winona, Minn. While she later kept her first name, she went a different direction with her surname due to her father.
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Ryder’s father, Michael Horowitz, was an author and fixture of the '60s counterculture who rubbed elbows with titans like Allen Ginsberg and Timothy Leary — the latter of whom became Ryder’s godfather. Additionally, Horowitz was a passionate fan of musician Mitch Ryder, which is where Ryder got the second half of her stage name.
Michael Caine
Michael Caine at the Red Sea International Film Festival in 2025
Credit: Tim P. Whitby/Getty
The legendary performer and frequent Christopher Nolan collaborator began his Michael Caine era in 1954, before which he went by the mouthful “Maurice Micklewhite.”
The actor initially performed under the name “Michael Scott,” but was required to change it when he relocated to London, where another actor with that name was already established. During a call with his agent, he looked outside and saw a poster for the film The Caine Mutiny, starring Humphrey Bogart.
“I was opposite the Odeon and I looked up, and my favorite actor is Humphrey Bogart, and there it was,” Caine said in 2016.
However, Caine divulged in the same interview that he was legally changing his name to Michael Caine. The reason? Airport security hassle.
“An airport security guard would say, ‘Hi, Michael Caine,’ and suddenly I’d give him a passport with a different name on it,” Caine said. “I could stand there for an hour. So I changed my name.”
on Entertainment Weekly
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