That’s what I figured was being referenced
Something else is tickling my memory about H.G. Wells being a woman in a different story but I’m drawing a blank.
Michael Caine changed his name from Maurice Mickelwhite to Michael Caine only in 2016. I believe this decision was made to avoid confusion with border control officials, most of whom expected to find the name Michael Caine on his passport.
Not a lot of people know that.
And named after the IWW songwriter, cartoonist, and martyr
No didn’t know that. I looked and saw when he was knighted it was under his birth name. The internet shows that his two daughters use Caine but I have no idea if it’s legal or not.
For the record, I was just making a silly joke about the author (who was a man). I never watched Warehouse 13 and was unaware there was a female character named H.G. Wells.
When I was young and stupid(er), I wondered why, after writing his own songs for years, in the mid-80s Elvis Costello started singing a bunch of songs written by Declan McManus. I thought maybe it was one of those Elton John/Bernie Taupin things.
Elvis/Declan did, I believe, legally change his name to “Elvis Costello” early on, but in the 80s legally changed it back.
The H.G. Wells example is instructive. Men also use initials in their pen name. W. Awdry (of the Thomas the Tank Engine books, though it he did include “The Rev.” in the name), for example. Science fiction author E. C. Tubb was another. And, of course, C.S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. It was also common in academia: e.g., A.J.P. Taylor.
I once did a quick survey of names that appeared in early SF pulp magazines, and, for authors I could find gender information, male names with initials were about as common as female names with initials. Also, women were often published in the pulps with their real names (especially Weird Tales, which had one or two women writers in every issue in the early 20s). Claire Winger Harris was a regular in Amazing at that time. Of those I discovered, only one – C. L. Moore – used initials.
Stage names are so common as to be barely noticeable, even in cases where the original name was fine. Emma Stone is actually Emily Stone, for instance.
The champ for keeping one’s name has to be Arnold Schwartzenegger.
Oddly, Evan Rachel Wood goes by her entire birth name, and yet she apparently really dislikes her first name.
Though, I think the OP’s question really was, “examples of performers who adopted stage names, but never changed their legal name to match the stage name.” (Otherwise, there are tons of performers who have always used their birth names.)
Right. A lot of people who take stage names also change it legally because it makes a lot of things more convenient. Some don’t feel the need. The thread is about the later. For some it’s pretty difficult to see for certain if they have changed it legally or not like Tom Cruise. Others were very open about going by their birth name (and then changing it later in the case of Michael Caine).
I don’t put performers like Meryl Streep in the same category. She was born Mary Streep but was always called Meryl from childhood on.
If anyone didn’t catch that, he was “only” Joe King… the son of Stephen and Tabitha.
In an intro to Full Throttle, he says he wanted to make it on his own merits (or, as it happened, not make it, for years…). But he regrets shortening his middle name… “I could’ve been writing stories with an UMLAUT in my name!”
Harry Stubbs wrote under the name Hal Clement, but writing was only part of his life, so he kept the name Stubbs for real-life activities (though he used a different pseudonym for his art work (George Richard). I mention this, because at a convention I heard him talk about an inconvenience of keeping his birth name for most purposes - when he was invited to be the Guest of Honor for conventions, he needed to remind the convention to buy his airline tickets for Harry Stubbs, since that was the name on his ID (I got the impression that he made this reminder because of an unfortunate past incident, but I could be wrong)
There was also Dorothy C. Fontana, the scriptwriter and story editor for Star Trek, who for years wrote under her initials, D. C. Fontana, because it was harder for women to break into television writing in the 50s and 60s.
Mark Twain seems to have never changed his legal name - his wife and all his children were named Clemens.
Though TBF that seems to be true for most writers of his era, so perhaps it doesn’t count.
I dreamed I saw him last night, alive as you and me.
As I understand it, Joe Hill ain’t dead, Joe Hill never died. In fact, he’s been sighted from San Diego to Maine
She had her first big role around the same time as Carrie Snodgress (“Diary of a Mad Housewife”).
From his 2018 obituary: “Bradford Dillman was the actor’s real name. He said “Bradford Dillman sounded like a distinguished, phony, theatrical name – so I kept it.”
Author Richard Bachman kept his birth name as his legal name throughout his career and even released some works under his birth name.