Stage name
Other performers use a stage name in order to retain anonymity, as is often the case for porn stars, especially if they intend on switching careers.
Some individuals who are related to a celebrity take a different last name, so they are not perceived to have received undue advantage from their family connection.
Some children born outside marriage to a (usually male) celebrity parent have done the same: Jett Williams (née Antha Bell Jett) and Scott Eastwood (né Scott Clinton Reeves) each use their fathers' last names; while others have not: Joseph Baena, son of Arnold Schwarzenegger, chose not to use his father's last name.
[9] Comedian Amos Muzyad Yaqoob Kairouz adopted the stage name Danny Thomas, largely because he did not want his friends and family to know he had gone back into working clubs where the salary was better.
[10] Guilds and associations that represent actors, such as the SAG-AFTRA (formed from a 2012 merger between the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists) in the United States and Equity in the United Kingdom, stipulate that no two members may have identical working names.
Julianne Moore was born Julie Anne Smith but found that all variations of that name were already used by other actors.
In the non-English-speaking world, an example is the Taiwanese Mandopop girl group S.H.E (composed of Selina Jen, Hebe Tian, and Ella Chen), whose members' English names were chosen by their manager after taking personality tests.
He had been using the name "Cary Lockwood", but the studio decided against it, deeming it too similar to another actor working at the time.
Joan Crawford, born Lucille Fay LeSueur, had her name changed as a result of a magazine poll organised by her studio, MGM.
[citation needed] Jon Stewart claims that he did not anglicize his name for career reasons, but because of his estranged relationship with his father.
[24] The use of stage names for ethnic purposes may vary widely depending on the media market the personality is representing.
Sicilian-American actor Espera Oscar de Corti, who built his film career portraying Native Americans, reinvented himself as Iron Eyes Cody.
[25][26] In reverse, Nichole Bloom, an actress with mixed Japanese-Irish parentage, changed her stage name to her birth name of Nichole Sakura in the wake of the summer of 2020, to honor her Japanese heritage; she had originally used Bloom, an English equivalent to Sakura (meaning cherry blossom) out of a fear of typecasting.
The Actors' Equity Association (AEA) advises performers to select a name that is easy for others to pronounce, spell, and remember.
Some performers, while paying great attention to their skills and abilities, give little thought to the difference that a well-thought-out name can make to their career.
[28] Actor Pete Postlethwaite was advised to change his surname by peers who quipped that it "would never be put up in lights outside theaters because they couldn't afford the electricity", but he decided to keep it.
For instance, Fall Out Boy vocalist and guitarist Patrick Stump removed the "h" from his original surname, Stumph.
Australian actress Yvonne Strahovski adopted a phonetic spelling of her surname, Strzechowski, as her stage name upon moving to the United States.
Rodolfo Alfonso Raffaello Piero Filiberto Guglielmi adopted the stage name Rudolph Valentino in part because American casting directors found his original surname difficult to pronounce.
Singer George Michael (the son of a Greek Cypriot restaurateur in North London) was born Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou.
Hal Linden, born Harold Lipshitz, adopted his stage name for fear that the embedded obscenity in his original surname could cost him work.
Ralph Lauren's brother (who was his guardian) changed their family name from Lifshitz for a similar reason: fear of mockery.
Duran Duran's Nick Rhodes, born Nicholas James Bates, changed his name to escape childhood ridicule (as a child, children would often tease him by calling him "Master Bates"); he adopted the surname "Rhodes" after the keyboard manufacturer of the same name.
For example, hip hop and EDM artists almost always use stage names, whereas "classical" composers and performers rarely do.
The British pop singer who was successful in the 1970s as Alvin Stardust previously went by the stage name of Shane Fenton in the 1960s.
Similarly, Freddie Mercury was born Farrokh Bulsara, but legally changed his name concurrently with the formation of Queen.
[citation needed] Entire musical groups have been known to adopt a common stage surname, the most notable arguably being the Ramones.
