# Why did actors stop using stage names? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 24, 2016, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-actors-stop-using-stage-names/760783 "2016-07-24T17:29:07Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2016, 2:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-actors-stop-using-stage-names/760783/21 "2016-07-25T02:33:04Z")
> [@Miller](#): > > Not just stage names, either. Lots of immigrants changed their last names to fit in better - sometimes, not entirely by choice. I used to have a friend whose grandfather showed up on Ellis Island with a last name that started with Vo-, followed by some improbable collection of Germanic consonants. The guy processing his paper work changed it to “Vote” and that’s been the family name ever since. I know there’s a million stories like this but no names were ever changed by officials at Ellis Island. There wasn’t even a procedure in which they could do so. ([One brief source](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/ellis-island-isnt-blame-your-familys-name-change-180953832/?no-ist).) People often voluntarily changed their names to fit in, but claiming that they were forced to do so made put the blame elsewhere. The equally simple reason for why actors today keep their names is because they can. Besides the other good reasons listed, the classic studio system wasn’t far removed from the days when actors were the world’s trash and going into acting tarnished the family name. People changed their given names to hide their identities and protect their relatives. Probably not many people in western culture think that way any more. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2016, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-actors-stop-using-stage-names/760783/22 "2016-07-25T02:41:26Z")
> [@Bijou\_Drains](#): > > Now it’s rare for them to use a stage name. I guess only rappers do that now. I suppose they figure now nobody will care if their name is Jewish,Polish, etc. > > I always think Eliza Dushku is a classic example of someone in the past who would have used a stage name. For what it’s worth, Eric Bana is, apparently, still Eric Banadinović. ---
**Author:** ![RivkahChaya](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rivkahchaya/32/8919_2.png) [@RivkahChaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RivkahChaya)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2016, 3:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-actors-stop-using-stage-names/760783/23 "2016-07-25T03:04:50Z")
People most certainly did get their names changed at Ellis Island. If a person who was illiterate from a Slavic nation gave their name as “KO-vach,” It usually got taken down and spelled “Kovatch,” or sometimes “Kovach.” If the person was literate, they wrote it as Kovac, Kowacz, or one of a few other ways it might be spelled depending on whether they were Polish, Czech, Croatian, or a few other ethnicities that had the name, and the Ellis Island scribes ignored diacritics. So you have “Kovac,” pronounced “KO-vac” instead of “KO-vach,” “KO-wash,” instead of “KO-vach,” and other people who spell their name Kovacs, but insist it’s Kovach. Some people end up with hybrids, like “Kowach.” Some people who spoke English chose to answer the question “What is you name?” By giving an English translation of the name. Some did not. We have a branch of the family who came from England, and chose to answer the "What is your name question as ‘Black’ instead of ‘Schwartz.’ They spoke The Queen’s English, traveled second class, settled in Boston, and just quietly started attending the Episcopal church. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2016, 3:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-actors-stop-using-stage-names/760783/24 "2016-07-25T03:21:44Z")
Jay Greenspan acts under the name “Jason Alexander”. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2016, 3:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-actors-stop-using-stage-names/760783/25 "2016-07-25T03:34:04Z")
[Why Your Family Name Was Not Changed at Ellis Island (and One That Was)](https://www.nypl.org/blog/2013/07/02/name-changes-ellis-island) > [@](#): > > Between 1892 and 1954, over twelve million people entered the United States through the immigration inspection station at Ellis Island, a small island located in the upper bay off the New Jersey coast. There is a myth that persists in the field of genealogy, or more accurately, in family lore, that family names were changed there. They were not. … > > Inspectors did not create records of immigration; rather they checked the names of the people moving through Ellis Island against those recorded in the ship’s passenger list, or manifest. The ship’s manifest was created by employees of the steamship companies that brought the immigrants to the United States, before the voyage took place, when the passenger bought their ticket. The manifest was presented to the officials at Ellis Island when the ship arrived. If anything, Ellis Island officials were known to correct mistakes in passenger lists. The Encyclopedia of Ellis Island states that employees of the steamship companies, > > ``` > …mostly ticket agents and pursers required no special identification from passengers and simply accepted the names the immigrants gave them. Immigrant inspectors [at Ellis Island] accepted these names as recorded in the ship's manifests and never altered them unless persuaded that a mistake had been made in the spelling or rendering of the name. Nonetheless the original name was never entirely scratched out and remained legible. (p.176) > > ``` [The myth that refuses to die: “Ellis Island changed our name”](http://rootsintheboot.com/the-myth-that-refuses-to-die-ellis-island-changed-our-name/) > [@](#): > > How do you wipe out a myth that is so pervasive, so persistent, so popular, that if it were a book it would’ve spent a century on the bestseller list? Maybe you can’t, but I think we owe it to the next generation of Italian Americans to try. … > > “It’s hard to shake the myth”, says President and CEO of the Statue of Liberty-Ellis Island Foundation and fellow Italian American, Stephen A. Briganti, who seemed both thrilled that I was making an attempt to “shake” it and cautiously optimistic at the same time. … In fact, Briganti himself confessed that he “thought that was the case” before he started working there. But he quickly added that “when you have an understanding of how the whole process took place, you know that it simply couldn’t have happened”. [They Changed Our Name at Ellis Island](http://www.genealogy.com/articles/research/88_donna.html) > [@](#): > > In reality, it is highly unlikely that this happened. The Immigration and Naturalization Service has a good article on immigrant name changes that explains why this wonderful story is a myth: the clerks at Ellis Island didn’t write down names. They worked from lists that were created by the shipping companies. What usually happened was the emigrant bought a ticket from an office near his home. So, the seller probably spoke the same language and transcribed the name correctly. In cases where the name was recorded incorrectly, it likely occurred in the old country, not at Ellis Island. [A Documentary Dispels An Urban Legend](http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB993429388148423038) > [@](#): > > We, the long-believing lay public, are delivered of this information – apparently well known among immigration researchers – by New York filmmaker Alan Berliner, who backed into it unsuspectingly while researching his latest documentary, “The Sweetest Sound,” a quirky, up-one-side-and-down-the-other exploration of his own name, which airs tomorrow on PBS’s “P.O.V.” > > “This revelation makes the film something of a Trojan Horse,” says Mr. Berliner, almost apologetically. Indeed, there’s Immigration and Naturalization Service Chief Historian Marian Smith with “read-my-lips” resignation, reciting for the viewing audience a litany of what was not at Ellis Island: no name-changing room, table, station, form, rule, regulation or law. “Name-changing was not part of the procedure at Ellis Island,” she says. “There was no name-changing anything.” End of discussion. Honestly, it’s a myth. It happened exactly once, but that was a weird thing. I know people want to believe in the myth, but every authority on the subject can give detailed accounting on why it’s a myth. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2016, 3:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-actors-stop-using-stage-names/760783/26 "2016-07-25T03:41:37Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Natalie Hershlager might disagree with the claim. She’s the exxception. Note that Mila Kunis hasn’t adopted a stage name, or Keira Knightley, or Sofia Vergara. ---
**Author:** ![nearwildheaven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/90db22/32.png) [@nearwildheaven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nearwildheaven)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2016, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-actors-stop-using-stage-names/760783/27 "2016-07-25T03:42:01Z")
Albert Einstein uses his mother’s maiden name, Finney, as a stage name for obvious reasons. 😛 Laura Jeanne Reese Witherspoon probably goes by Laura Toth when she’s doing the IRL thing. I can’t blame Rush guitarist Aleksandr Zivojinovic (pronounced (zi-vee-no-vitch) for Anglicizing his name. His Yugoslavian-immigrant father actually considered changing the family name to “Lifeson” long before his son ever entertained the thought of a musical career. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2016, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-actors-stop-using-stage-names/760783/28 "2016-07-25T03:44:51Z")
> [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](#): > > She’s the exxception. Note that Mila Kunis hasn’t adopted a stage name, or Keira Knightley, or Sofia Vergara. Winona Ryder did, though. At that, Oscar Isaac has explained how, _“starting out as an actor, you immediately worry about being pigeonholed or typecast. I don’t want to just go up for the dead body, the gangster, the bandolero, whatever. I don’t want to be defined by someone else’s idea of what an Oscar Hernández should be playing.”_ ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2016, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-actors-stop-using-stage-names/760783/29 "2016-07-25T04:02:04Z")
> [@nearwildheaven](#): > > Albert Einstein uses his mother’s maiden name, Finney, as a stage name for obvious reasons. 😛 I think you’re thinking of Albert Brooks. And while I’m here: Julianne Moore was the stage name picked by Julie Anne Smith. ---
**Author:** ![Rick\_Kitchen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rick_kitchen/32/522_2.png) [@Rick\_Kitchen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick_Kitchen)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2016, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-actors-stop-using-stage-names/760783/30 "2016-07-25T04:18:53Z")
I think Flea has changed his name. Nicholas Cage was born a Coppola. Brie Larson is Brianne Sidonie Desaulniers ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2016, 4:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-actors-stop-using-stage-names/760783/31 "2016-07-25T04:25:36Z")
> [@Rick\_Kitchen](#): > > Brie Larson is Brianne Sidonie Desaulniers At that: Téa Leoni? Elizabeth Téa Pantaleoni. ---
**Author:** ![rat\_avatar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rat_avatar/32/255_2.png) [@rat\_avatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rat_avatar)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2016, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-actors-stop-using-stage-names/760783/32 "2016-07-25T04:28:21Z")
It depends on what you call a “stage name”. To join SAG-AFTRA you need a non-conflicting unique professional name. It may just be that people tend towards a first and last name that make it appear to be uncommon but it is still typically the norm. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2016, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-actors-stop-using-stage-names/760783/33 "2016-07-25T04:35:41Z")
> [@rat\_avatar](#): > > It depends on what you call a “stage name”. To join SAG-AFTRA you need a non-conflicting unique professional name. It may just be that people tend towards a first and last name that make it appear to be uncommon but it is still typically the norm. Dunno if that’s why Tim Allen doesn’t act as Tim Dick, but I commend his choice. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2016, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-actors-stop-using-stage-names/760783/34 "2016-07-25T04:35:44Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > Winona Ryder did, though. > > At that, Oscar Isaac has explained how, _“starting out as an actor, you immediately worry about being pigeonholed or typecast. I don’t want to just go up for the dead body, the gangster, the bandolero, whatever. I don’t want to be defined by someone else’s idea of what an Oscar Hernández should be playing.”_ Ironically, until recently I assumed he was Jewish. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2016, 4:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-actors-stop-using-stage-names/760783/35 "2016-07-25T04:47:41Z")
I’d thought that about Zachary Levi. (Real name: Zachary Levi Pugh. Does that count?) ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2016, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-actors-stop-using-stage-names/760783/36 "2016-07-25T05:11:13Z")
Come to think of it, Jonah Hill Feldstein decided to act under the name Jonah Hill. ---
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2016, 6:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-actors-stop-using-stage-names/760783/37 "2016-07-25T06:25:32Z")
So the OP should be why are people no longer using stage names except for all the ones who are? David Tennant is David McDonald. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2016, 10:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-actors-stop-using-stage-names/760783/38 "2016-07-25T10:01:56Z")
Meg Hyra sounds like a medical condition, but she acts under the name Meg Ryan. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2016, 10:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-actors-stop-using-stage-names/760783/39 "2016-07-25T10:45:02Z")
> [@rat\_avatar](#): > > It depends on what you call a “stage name”. To join SAG-AFTRA you need a non-conflicting unique professional name. > [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > IIRC, Michael Keaton goes by “Michael Keaton” because “Michael Douglas” was taken. Elizabeth Banks had to do that as Elizabeth Mitchell was occupied. Though weirdly there are two actresses named Peyton List. They even worked together once. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [July 25, 2016, 11:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-actors-stop-using-stage-names/760783/40 "2016-07-25T11:01:28Z")
> [@GuanoLad](#): > > Elizabeth Banks had to do that as Elizabeth Mitchell was occupied. Nathan Lane likewise, since Joseph Lane was off-limits. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-actors-stop-using-stage-names/760783.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-did-actors-stop-using-stage-names/760783.md?page=3)