Ok regarding my two previous posts, Eddie Money was really named Eddie Mahoney and Toby Keith was Toby Keith Covel.
It got me wondering – has any celebrity ever gone back to his/her real name other than John Cougar Mellencamp? (John began as Johnny Cougar, but then elected to start using his given full name (click here for back story on how all that went down.))
John Cougar was told by his then manager that Johnny Cougar was easier to market:
I tried the ole Google machine, with no luck, when entering “Celebrities who have gone back to using their real names.” As you can see here however, I got close to 900K entries on “Celebs and their real names” but nada about any of them reverting to their given names.
Did find an ironic story as I pursued this. Michael Keaton’s real name is Michael Douglas. However, went he went to sign up with the Screen Actor’s Guild, he couldn’t do so as Douglas because THE Michael Douglas, as in Kirk’s son, was already a member. The irony? Kirk Douglas’ real name was Issur Demsky. Kirk was born in New York City to parents who were first generation Russian immigrants and had changed their name from Danielovitch to Demsky when they first came to the U.S. Kirk then changed his name when he entered the Navy.
Keith Urban only modified his real name (Urbahn) by dropping the letter h. My guess is that pronunciation-wise, Urban was preferable to Urbon or Urbain, however his original name was said.
My buddy John Carbone informed me that his son Johnny’s band that he now manages “Mike and the Moonpies” has switched their name to Silverada. Again, the reason for doing so had to do with marketing a single band name was easier than they could with an individual Mike and the so-and-so’s. Not sure about the logic there; but then again that is because I kinda liked the name “Mike and the Moonpies.”
Quick Buzzy reference here. When he was politicing and running for office he talked about legally changing his name from Clarence to Buzzy. He considered doing so because the voting bubbas mandated that legal first names appear on the ballots and no nicknames. Buzzy felt that more people knew him as Buzzy than they did as Clarence, and thus it would get him more votes if he appeared as Buzzy Ridgell on the ballot.