Celebrities changing their name to something less 'foreign sounding'

[800caloriesofwine]

I'm at that point in lockdown where I'm scrolling through lists of stage names on RankerSo many celebrities have changed their surnames to anglicised ones, so many! I mean there's the obvious like Freddie Mercury and Martin/Charlie Sheen, but so many others, why?
Would we really not have gone to see a film with Winona Horowitz in? Or Margarita Cansino? Or Lea Sarfati?
Why do some actors stick to their actual names and some change theirs? The trouble is by taking a Hebrew name and replacing it with something Anglicised is obvious.

Fun to find out Shania Twain is actually called Eileen though

I don’t know about celebrities but a lot of non white people living in the West often give names to their kids that won’t be hard to pronounce, so as a preemptive measure. I had a list of really beautiful and evocative names for my son that I realised would be butchered if he grew up in the West. So both my kids have relatively easy to pronounce names. If they had grown up in Asia I would have given them totally different names. (My name is almost impossible to pronounce for Westerners but my parents who had only visited Europe once before I was born in a very large cosmopolitan Asian city of 20 million spent zero time thinking about how my name might be pronounced by Westerners. Their main thought they told me was that it wasn’t difficult to write in my mother tongue which has a slightly complicated alphabet).

Lots of people have stage names though, Elton John, Cliff Richard. Perhaps somepeople think it will make them more accessible to every one or more cool. Chris Akabussi isn,t a Chris he has a African name.

I've had people at work ask me to change my name (Welsh). I've always resisted, but it does make life harder. Some people even avoid talking to me because they can't say my name. I have an easier shortened version, but some people refuse to use it because it doesn't go with what they see written down and they prefer to mangle my real name instead.

I would imagine it’s about likelihood of getting auditions when they first start (think about all those articles/studies about CVs with “white” names v.s. The same CV with a “black” name and how many interview invitations they get). Then once they are starting to get a reputation, they don’t want to change their name back because it’s part of their brand.

Hats off to earlier poster about Siddig el Fadil on Deep Space Nine, I was thinking of the same example! And that’s in a program that famously wanted to be racially diverse compared to other programs of the time.

I don't tell people any more that my Welsh name has an English equivalent - think Mari (marry) which is Welsh for Mary. I've had too many people say 'oh, Mary's much easier, I'll call you that instead'. . Like @Gwenhwyfar, I've had people avoid saying my name in conversation.

I've had a few suggestions I change it to something English over the years, or to add an English middle name 'to balance it out, you don't want people thinking you're foreign'. Some family members on the English side, and some of DH's family thought I would get more responses to my CV if I changed my name to something like Sophie. I didn't, and I've had plenty of jobs.

Apparently Cameron asked Anunziata Rees-Mogg to stand for election as Nancy rather than Anunziata and she refused. I don't agree with her politics, but she was right to insist on using her own name.

It's such a shame people are still being asked to hide their heritage in 2020.

"I don't tell people any more that my Welsh name has an English equivalent "

The English equivalent of my Welsh name is quite obscure and of course, just not my name.
I do use a very generic English name in Starbucks or whenever else I'm asked my name and it doesn't matter what I answer.

I think the Elton's and the Engleberts were to be more " exotic" and showbizzy it isn't the same as Kirk Douglas changing his name to be seen as less Jewish.

@Mrsjayy I agree, it's not the same.

Even white foreign people living in English cultures give their children names that are easy to pronounce for English speakers.

My parents did this - sort of, no-one pronounces my name correctly but compared to some of the names they could have picked I get a lot of 'what a lovely name' comments. If they had picked my GM's name I would just get garbled rubbish and laughter behind closed doors.

Every 4 months I get new junior doctors and lots of them have 'foreign' names. And every 4 months I get to witness staff members saying it's too hard to pronounce and do they use something else for short. Just bloody try FFS.

Remember how racist Jade Goody’s mum was about Shilpa Shetty and couldn’t even pronounce what is a pretty straightforward name and wouldn’t even try.
There’s nothing wrong with trying to pronounce a name and getting it wrong but in some circles there is sheer ignorance.
At different points in history Mediterranean and even Irish people have been considered “not white” and this renaming reflects that.

It’s because there’s more potential opportunity if you conform to being standard Caucasian white with middling Christian/western beliefs.

You can still get the job as an Hispanic, Asian, Jewish, mafia, disabled, gay, (insert other) character if you’re a white person, so it doesn’t limit you.

There’s loads of people on that list who have just changed their names to something a bit snappier or more glamorous-sounding.

One of the celebrities on the list had changed their name to my actual surname, funny as I always hated my surname and can’t imagine choosing it.

I suppose one perk of this is that when they are famous under an alias they can still book holidays/flights/buy piles cream in their real names without attracting attention

I used to work at the deed poll office and I’d say 90% of people who submitted to change their full name were people from ethnic minority groups wanting a more anglicised or beige name. For all the reasons everyone has already mentioned. It’s just pragmatism and realism for a lot of people and is a personal choice:

• easier for people to pronounce and spell
• less chance of ridicule from the minority of unsavoury people in some sectors
• makes race/religion/heritage/ethnicity more ambiguous for the workplace and in dating
• more chance of securing job interviews, auditions, opportunities and more confidence asking for things where they have to give their name
• fed up of continuous mispronunciations and misspellings
• less chance of preconceptions, stereotypes and typecasts
• some see it as a sign of integration
• some have no affiliation to their race or culture other than in name only and want a name that’s part of the more westernised culture they grew up in and is more familiar to them.

It's the same with CVs, I've read that employers can be 'put off' by names they can't pronounce, and will tend to gloss over those ones, if they even look at them. Working at a school, I had one LSA say to me, "I hate it when people have funny sounding names!" at least she had the nerves to say it out loud, but it's what a lot of narrow minded people think.

I prefer to give anglicised first names to my kids because, to be perfectly honest, they get treated with more respect.

Mrsjayy Sat 13-Jun-20 09:06:49

Darius Danesh him of xfactor fame changed his name to Cambell I'm not sure why

Darius was originally Campbell-Danesh. His mum was a Scot (Campbell) and his dad Iranian (Danesh).

Why is it reduced to the lowest common denominator, though? Still.

It is shocking to me that people are dismissive of non British common names - does it really take that much more effort? It's a reluctance to recognise other cultures masquerading as laziness, indifference, etc.

It helps them get cast in mainstream aka white roles.

Oscar Isaac is from Guatemala, he dropped his surname Hernandez. Now he seems “white.”

It’s been standard practice for Jewish actors pretty much since Hollywood began.

We have to ask ourselves as audiences if we’re complicit in this and if we want it to change or not.

@Gwenhwyfar you might like this (Irish equivalent)

(Great idea, slightly grating production values)

Its not strictly the same thing but my favourite is Jason Derulo changing his name to that from his actual name, Jason Desrouleaux, because he knew people would have difficulty pronouncing it.

There's obviously an element of racism and typecasting in it, but I don't think it's necessarily limited to that. Some names sound more 'showbiz' than others, hence they get changed.

Anna May Bullock, David Spencer, Thomas Woodward, Rita Crudgington, Harry webb - all of these sound like perfectly normal western/English-speaking names - but Tina Turner, Ricky Valance, Tom Jones, Cheryl Baker, Cliff Richard just sound more 'starry', partly because they flow more naturally. And if you're primarily looking to find fame in the UK/US or other English-speaking western nations, it's only natural that there will be a bias towards what those demographics find easiest and most pleasing/showbizzy to hear and say.

The likes of Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich and Peter, Paul & Mary were considered quirky, bland and uncool-sounding in a way that 'The Who' or 'The Rolling Stones' most certainly weren't.

Indeed, racism (or at least unfamliarity with other cultures and their styles of names) plays a part, but if Rita Crudgington had been born Fatima Al-Mukhtar and had been similarly advised or chosen herself - as a UK-based artist - to go professionally as Cheryl Baker, because it trips off the tongue more easily and sounds more showbizzy, would that really be any different?

Darius was originally Campbell-Danesh. His mum was a Scot (Campbell) and his dad Iranian (Danesh).

I may have this completely wrong, but I seem to recall that Darius was always much closer to his mum and there might have been enmity with his dad, so he decided to drop his dad's surname.

We see it all the time on MN threads where people don't want to keep or take the name of a parent (or have their children take/keep the name) where said parent has been absent, uninvolved, maybe even abusive. It's usually nothing to do with the actual name or the millions of other people in the world called Higgins or Patel - just their personal association with a particular person with that particular name.

Some actors (in the UK anyway) had to change their name as theirs was already registered for an Equity card (I think I'm right on this). The only examples that jump to mind are David Walliams and David tenant

Saxe-Coburg-Gota?
Battenburg?