‘Which celebrity did you think was using their real name, only to find out it’s actually a stage name?’ – 21 famous people who understandably rebranded themselves

‘What’s in a name?’ as Shakespeare’s Juliet famously wondered. Well, quite a lot, it seems, if the amount of famous people who change theirs is anything to go by.

They’ve been discussing this on the AskReddit page after petalpoundcake posed this question…

Which celebrity did you think was using their real name, only to find out it’s actually a stage name?

And plenty of people chipped in with examples of the monikers they’d been duped by, like these…

1.

‘My favourite is Michael Caine. Real name, Maurice Joseph Mickelwhite.’
–Catherine_the_Okay

2.

‘Stevie Wonder. I figured Wonder was probably a stage name, but his first name threw me for a loop. Stevland Morris.’
–orangustang

3.

‘Tina Fey. Her real first name is Elizabeth.’
–SharkFart86

4.

‘And Tina is short for her middle name Stamatina.’
-rad2themax

5.

‘Katy Perry. Her real name is Katy Hudson but Kate Hudson is hogging that one.’
–jittery_raccoon

6.

‘Just like David Bowie’s real name is David Jones, but one of the Monkees scooped that one first.’
–ReactsWithWords

7.

‘Kirk Douglas. Real name: Issur Danielovitch.’
–Wyldjay2

8.

‘Fun fact: Kirk’s son is the actor Michael Douglas, and him choosing to use the Douglas name meant that another Michael Douglas had to adopt a different name when he became an actor. Which is why Michael Keaton is so named.’
–TrappedUnderCats

9.

‘I’ve got the opposite: I always assumed the singer Eagle-Eye Cherry was using a stage name, but come to find out that’s his birth name.’
–Plug_5

10.

‘Olivia Wilde. Kinda makes sense after hearing her real last name. Cockburn.’
–theassassintherapist

11.

‘Gene Wilder is Jerome Silberman, of all things.’
–Bobby_Orrs_Knees