Spike Jones the madcap bandleader is a tad less popular nowadays than Spike Jonze the quirky director.
I suppose that might be the case in some demographics with the comedy-folk duo Garfunkel & Oates, versus the earlier music duos Simon & Garfunkel and Hall & Oates. But it would probably be a pretty niche group.
REO Speedwagon (the band) is certainly more well known than the truck.
Anne Hathaway was apparently named Anne because of Shakespeare’s wife but that is her real name.
Tom Hardy goes by his real middle name so I don’t think that counts. He is Edward Thomas Hardy. If he went by Ed Hardy he would be forced to wear ugly shirts.
And then there’s Lynyrd Skynyrd.
Kings of Leon are better known than any of the kings of León.
Fountains of Wayne was more famous than the lawn ornament store in Wayne New Jersey. Neither currently exist.
While I’ve heard of all three groups, I can actually picture Garfunkel & Oates while I can’t the others.
Arthur Flegenheimer preferred Dutch Schultz. I’m not sure how famous the original boxer was. Gangster Joe Doto was probably more well known as “Adonis”, at least in New York, than the myth guy. He was slightly vain.
He’s so unhip that when you say Dylan,
he thinks you’re talkin’ about Dylan Thomas
Whoever he is.
The man ain’t got no culture
Simon & Garfunkel, “A Simple Desultory Philippic”
But does Stacy’s mom still got it going on?
Even in the summer of 1972, with “Alone Again, Naturally” all over the airwaves, I’d have said Gilbert and Sullivan was better known, and pretty much everyone knew that Gilbert O’s stage name was a play on G&S.
ETA:
I’d say they still are. The band is pretty much the only reason I still remember that there was once an inventor with that name. (It’s a shame the original Jethro Tull didn’t invent the aqualung.)
Seriously, how many people outside of England have even heard of Jethro Tull the inventor?
More ETA:
I’d heard a million times of the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand setting off WWI (yeah, I know - it was a war waiting for an excuse to happen), but I’ll say this for the band: that’s how I learned that Ferdinand wasn’t the archduke’s first name.
Sister Suzy, brother John
Martin, Luther, Phil & Don
Uncle Ernie, Auntie Jin
Open the door, let 'em in
oh yeah
Apparently Martin Luther King, Sr. was originally named Michael King, and changed his own name in honor of Martin Luther.
What I find odd is that both Martin Luther King , Sr. and Jr., are named after the founder of the Lutheran church, yet both were Baptist ministers. The elder King admired Luther for the power of his protests (according to his Wikipedia page), and his son (also born Michael King) took the name from his father, but it still seems a little strange to me. Kind of like a Catholic changing his name to John Calvin Whatever.
As I pointed out in another thread, F. Scott Fitzgerald was actually Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald. But I suspect Francis Scott Key and F. Scott Fitzgerald are about even in the “famous” department.
Martin Luther was the founder of the entire Protestant Reformation, not just the Lutheran church.
All protestant denominations AFAIK recognize Luther as the one who started the reformation, and recognize his theses as the basic reasons they aren’t Catholic even if they don’t consider themselves big L Lutheran