When it comes to celebrities, it's rarely a surprise to hear that the name you know a singer or movie star by isn't actually their name. But while some famous faces come up with entirely different monikers—Norma Jeane Mortenson became Marilyn Monroe, for instance—others skip right past their given first name to be professionally known by their middle name. Sometimes, this is for their career, but other times, it's just because they were called by their middle name growing up. And, in quite a few cases, it happens when a person is named after their parent and want to avoid confusion. Read on to see which celebrities you probably didn't realize have been using their middle names this whole time—and to hear the first names you never knew.
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Full name: Christopher Ashton Kutcher
During a 2018 interview on Armchair Expert, Ashton Kutcher's wife and That '70s Show co-star Mila Kunis shared that she calls him by his first name only when they are with his family in his hometown. "When we go to Iowa, I call him Chris," she said. "Everybody, his parents, everybody calls him Chris." She added, "You pop in and out of these two versions."
Full name: Vera Mindy Chokalingam
Actor and writer Mindy Kaling shortened her last name and began going by her middle name early in her career. In a 2020 interview with Fresh Air, Kaling explained that her name was often mispronounced when she was doing comedy shows. She was conflicted about shortening her name, but after talking to her parents about it, she went through with it. "It's bittersweet, but I have to say, it was such a help to my career to have a name that people could pronounce."
Full name: Robyn Rihanna Fenty
Rihanna goes by only one name professionally and it's her middle one. "When people call me Robyn, my head just flies around because I feel like that person knows me," the singer told Glamour in 2013. "But Rihanna, that tends to be people's own [creation]. Robyn is who I am. Rihanna—that's an idea of who I am."
Full name: William Bradley Pitt
Brad Pitt goes by a shortened version of his middle name, Bradley. Pitt is named after his father, William Alvin Pitt. In 2018, Page Six reported that Pitt was overheard introducing himself to a random woman at a coffee shop as William, so if the rumor is true, he does still use the name sometimes.
Full name: James Paul McCartney
Answering a fan question on his website in 2015, Paul McCartney explained that his parents always called him Paul instead of his first name, James. For one, his dad's name is also James, so it helped avoid confusion. But, his brother, Peter Michael McCartney, was also called my his middle name, Michael. McCartney explained, "I've ended up thinking it was rather Irish! I've no idea! My mum was Irish—and I don't know, maybe there's just some old thing where they call you by your second name."
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Full name: Laura Jeanne Reese Witherspoon
Reese Witherspoon goes by Reese, rather than her first name, Laura, or her other middle name, Jeanne. That may be because it's her mother Betty Reese's maiden name.
Full name: Rachel Meghan Markle
She's now Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, but her real name is actually Rachel. Meghan Markle has been known as Meghan since before she was famous as an actor, but her real name does pop up every now and then on official documents. "Rachel" was spotted on her new daughter's birth certificate, and Queen Elizabeth referred to her as Rachel Meghan Markle when she officially gave her consent for Markle to wed Prince Harry.
Full names: Mary Elle Fanning and Hannah Dakota Fanning
In a 2016 interview with Glamour, Elle Fanning explained why she and her sister, Dakota Fanning, don't use their first names. "I just never went by Mary, like ever," the actor said. "My mom goes by her middle name, and my sister goes by her middle name. Her first name is Hannah. It's possibly a Southern thing, I don't know. But since my mom goes by her middle name, we go by our middle names too."
Full name: Elizabeth Stamatina Fey
Tina Fey goes by a shortened version of her middle name, Stamatina. Her friend and fellow comedic actor Amy Poehler even calls Fey "Betty" as a nickname for Elizabeth. "My first name is really Elizabeth—Elizabeth Tina—so she's one of the few people that knows that, so she calls me Betty," Fey said on Today in 2015.
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Full name: Patricia Rooney Mara
Actor Rooney Mara goes by her middle name because "Patricia" never felt right. She went by "Tricia" when she was growing up, but she told Paper Magazine in 2010 (via Vogue), 'I never really liked my first name. I never felt like a Tricia. And Rooney is more memorable." Rooney is also her mother's maiden name.
Full name: Olive Marie Osmond
Marie Osmond is named after her mother, Olive May Osmond—and they aren't the only two Olives in the family. Osmond has eight grandchildren, and one of her granddaughters is named Olive, carrying on the family tradition.
Full name: Henry Warren Beatty
Warren Beatty goes by his middle name and changed the spelling of his last name slightly. According to the biography, Warren Beatty: A Private Man, Beatty changed his last name from "Beaty" to "Beatty" to help with pronunciation. But, one of his cousins claimed that he wanted his first and last names to have the same number of letters for the way it looked.
Full name: James Lance Bass
*NSYNC singer Lance Bass uses his middle name rather than his first name, James. It seems that like some others on the list, he may go by his middle name simply to distinguish himself from his father, who is named James Irvin Bass Jr.
Full name: Lauren Keyana Palmer
Keke Palmer goes by a shortened version of her middle name, Keyana. The singer and actor titled her 2016 EP Lauren, and told Billboard of the decision, "I feel like it helps keep in mind what this whole EP is about, which is giving an entrance into who I am truly, like where I come from, how my career as Keke Palmer began. Keke, of course, is a family nickname. Everything attached to it—being my entertainment name, I feel like are often so separate from the totality of who I am because so much of my early career was based off of acting and my characters."
Full name: Joseph Jason Namakaeha Momoa
Jason Momoa uses one of his middle names, unsurprisingly, it may be because he shares a first name with his father, Joseph Momoa. In turn, Momoa passed his Hawaiian middle name, Namakaeha, down to his son, Nakoa-Wolf Manakauapo Namakaeha Momoa.
Full name: Aubrey Drake Graham
Drake uses his middle name for his music career, but when he was an actor on Canadian TV as a teen, he still went by Aubrey Graham. He said that his dad chose the name Drake. "His reasoning behind it, I am not sure," the rapper told Hip Hop Canada (via Insider). "My dad is a character so it could be anything. I just really loved the name and I embraced it my whole life. Drake is me in my everyday life, Drake is who I am and Aubrey is more of a separate, sort of proper individual."
Full name: David Jude Heyworth Law
Jude Law has gone by Jude since he was a kid. During a 2016 appearance on The Graham Norton Show (via the Daily Mail), he explained that the name meant he was sometimes mistaken for a girl and was accidentally put into the girls' dormitories when he joined a theater group. "It's not the easiest name to grow up with in South East London to be really honest—a blonde annoying little boy wanting to be an actor called Jude
Full name: Walter Bruce Willis
Walter Willis just doesn't have the same ring to it. While he's known as Bruce Willis, in 2007, the actor made headlines when he joined a fan forum using his real name as his screen name, "Walter B". Some other users did not believe he was really who he said he was until he revealed himself on video.
Full name: Audrey Faith Perry
Singer Faith Hill goes by her middle name and uses her surname from her first marriage professionally. And since she goes by Faith, she ended up naming her youngest daughter after herself, giving her the name Audrey Caroline McGraw.
Full name: Samuel Timothy McGraw
Hill's husband, Tim McGraw also goes by his middle name, albeit a shortened version. McGraw and Hill once used this thing they have in common to their advantage and announced a surprise concert together under the name Sam & Audrey.
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