Halsey is just “Ashley” all scrambled up!
Plenty of people in Hollywood work under a stage name, whether it’s because of union rules preventing them from using the same name as another actor or simply their desire to stand out.
However, not everyone chooses a stage name that feels completely different than their real name. In fact, some barely deviate from their real names at all.
Here are 15 celebs whose stages names are so close to their real names that you probably didn’t realize they’d changed anything at all:
1. Michael J. Fox is actually Michael A. Fox — the “A” is for Andrew.
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When he registered with SAG, his name was already taken by the character actor Michael Fox, who appeared in Young Frankenstein and The Twilight Zone.
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Michael J. Fox didn’t want to be Andrew Fox or Andy Fox, and just using “A” sounded too close to the Canadian “eh” to the Alberta native’s ears. So he chose “J” after actor Michael J. Pollard from Bonnie and Clyde.
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2. Jason Derulo is actually Jason Desrouleaux.
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“Derulo” is the phonetic spelling of “Desrouleaux,” so it reads exactly the way it’s supposed to be pronounced.
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3. Meryl Streep is actually Mary Streep.
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Naming the firstborn daughter Mary was a tradition in her mother’s family, but her father coined the nickname “Meryl” — which the actor hated.
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However, it stuck, and — despite wishing her name was Patty or Cathy — Meryl Streep became a household name.
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4. Meryl’s firstborn daughter and fellow actor Mamie Gummer is actually Mary Gummer, continuing the family tradition.
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She’s nicknamed after her great-grandmother, who also went by Mamie.
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“No one ever calls me Mary, except only if my husband is very serious about something,” she told Glamour.
5. Nicki Minaj was born Onika Maraj, and friends called her Nicki or Cooky.
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When she signed one of her first production deals, someone at the company won a fight with Nicki about changing her last name to “Minaj” — and she’s hated it ever since.
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“I fought him tooth and nail. But he convinced me,” she told the Guardian.
6. Emma Stone is actually Emily Stone.
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Another SAG member was already registered under her name, so she decided to use the name Riley Stone.
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“I landed a guest spot on Malcolm in the Middle, and one day they were calling, ‘Riley! Riley! Riley! We need you on set, Riley!’ and I had no idea who they were talking to. At that moment, I realized that I just couldn’t be Riley,” she told W magazine.
However, six months later, she decided to go back and change her name to Emma — the name that she’d wished for as a Baby Spice-obsessed kid.
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She told The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon, “It wasn’t necessarily because of [Baby Spice], but yes, in second grade, did I go up to the teacher and ask her to call me Emma? Yes I did. And was it because of Emma Lee Bunton from the Spice Girls? Yes it was.”
7. Prince may sound like a stage name, but all he did was drop his middle and last name. He was born Prince Rogers Nelson.
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However, his name was originally his father’s stage name. Jazz musician John Nelson was the Prince Rogers in The Prince Rogers Trio.
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“I named my son Prince because I wanted him to do everything I wanted to do,” John Nelson said in a 1991 interview.
From 1993-2000, Prince used a different stage name — the unpronounceable “love symbol” — as an act of rebellion against his record label for refusing to let him release new music as soon as it was ready.
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In a press release, he said, “Warner Bros took the name, trademarked it, and used it as the main marketing tool to promote all of the music I wrote. … The company owns the name Prince and all related music marketed under Prince. I became merely a pawn used to produce more money for Warner Bros.”
However, after his Warner Bros. contract expired, the Artist Formerly Known as Prince became Prince once again.
8. Billie Eilish goes by her first name and one of her middle names. Her full name is Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O’Connell.
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Her grandfather William died close to her birth, so she was named Billie in honor of him.
However, she was almost Billie Pirate — until her uncle shot it down.
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“Pirate was going to be my middle name, but then my uncle had a problem with it because pirates are bad,” she told the BBC. “Then Baird is my mother’s name.”
9. Nina Dobrev is actually Nikolina Dobreva.
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She chose to shorten her name at the start of her acting career.
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10. J. Cole is actually Jermaine Cole.
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As a teenager, he rapped under the name Therapist, which was suggested by his fellow Bomm Sheltuh members.
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On MTV’s When I Was 17, he said, “We used to look through the dictionary for rap names. I could never find nothing. One day these dudes were like, ‘Yo, we got a name for you.'”
However, to him, Therapist felt more like a wrestler’s name than a rapper’s, so he decided to change his name to J. Cole.
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“J. Cole felt like my real name. That was a real natural fit. It didn’t feel like I was trying to be anything,” he said.
11. Fergie’s stage name is based on her original last name, Ferguson. She was born Stacy Ann Ferguson.
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However, in 2013, she made her stage name legal and adopted her then-husband’s last name, making her Fergie Duhamel.
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12. Ashton Kutcher goes by his middle name. His full name is Christopher Ashton Kutcher.
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At 19, he decided to change his name when he starting acting.
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13. Halsey is an anagram of Ashley Frangipane’s first name.
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They thought Ashley Frangipane was “weak and silly and sad,” so they came up with a new name while riding the New York City subway to the Halsey Street stop in Brooklyn.
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“At the time, I felt that Ashley didn’t deserve to be famous and successful because she wasn’t that special, but if I made Halsey, maybe she could be,” she told Cosmopolitan.
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“I created a person, and she could do everything. There was no way that Ashley was going to become a king, but I made a new name for myself and took her to paranormal, supernatural heights,” they continued.
14. Barbra Streisand was born Barbara Streisand.
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She dropped the second “a” from Barbara when she was 18 because she wanted to be unique but didn’t want to change her name completely.
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“I didn’t want to change my name because that was too false. You know, people were saying you could be Joanie Sands, or something like that,” she told CBS.
15. And finally, Guy Fieri was born Guy Ferry.
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Fieri was actually his family’s original name, but his grandfather changed it when he emigrated from Italy to the US. However, in 1995, Guy changed it back.
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He got his name changed when he married his wife Lori, and they both took the Fieri name.
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