This is a list of notable people who have changed, adopted or adjusted their surnames based on a mother's or grandmother's maiden name. Included are people who changed their legal names and people who created personal or professional pseudonyms. Under longstanding Western custom and law, children are customarily given the father's surname, except for children born outside marriage, who often carry their mother's family names. [1] In mediaeval times where a great family died out in the male line, an alternative male heir to the estates was selected as one of the younger sons of a daughter, who was required by the bequest to adopt, by royal licence, in lieu of his patronymic, his maternal surname and coat of arms for himself and his descendants. This was also the origin of double-barrelled surnames, where the paternal surname was partially retained, or resurrected by a later generation. The compliance with the terms of the bequest was essential to avoid challenge by another potential heir in the lawcourts. In the 1970s some women began to adopt their mother's maiden name as their legal surnames. [2] People in Sweden have recently begun adopting maternal line surnames in an effort to broaden the number of last names in the country. [3] Such practices add considerable difficulties to the study of genealogy and family history.
Many actors and other entertainers elect to add or include their mothers' maiden names in their adopted stage names. The book How to be a Working Actor: The Insider's Guide to Finding Jobs in Theater, Film, and Television advises aspiring performers to consider changing their names, noting that "if [your birth name] is difficult to spell, pronounce, or remember, it may not be the name you want for your professional career." It goes on to suggest: "If you want to retain a connection to your family, try using your mother's maiden name or the name of a revered relative." [4]
A person's mother's maiden name is used by many financial institutions as a key piece of information to validate a customer's identity. [5] In 2005, researchers showed that the common practice of using a mother's maiden name as the basis for a stage name could be exploited to entice people to reveal that name and other details that could allow fraudsters to steal their identities. Researchers asked a random sample of people on London streets a series of questions, beginning with "What is your name?" They then engaged in conversation about theatre, asked people if they knew how actors choose their stage names, then told them that stage names were typically a combination of the name of a pet and the mother's maiden name. Next the participants were asked what their stage names would be; 94% responded by revealing both their mother's maiden name and a pet's name. [5]
Berinthia "Berry" Berenson-Perkins was an American actress, model and photographer. She was the widow of actor Anthony Perkins. She died in the September 11 attacks as a passenger on American Airlines Flight 11.
A stage name or professional name is a pseudonym used by performers, authors, and entertainers—such as actors, comedians, singers, and musicians. Such professional aliases are adopted for a wide variety of reasons and they may be similar, or nearly identical, to an individual's birth name. Though uncommon, some performers choose to adopt their stage name as a legal name.
Ada Brand Thomson, known professionally as Vivien Merchant, was an English actress. She began her career in 1942, and became known for dramatic roles on stage and in films. In 1956 she married the playwright Harold Pinter and performed in many of his plays.
Kim Stanley was an American actress, primarily in television and theatre, but with occasional film performances.
Estelle Parsons is an American actress.
Louisa Lane Drew was an English-born American actress and theatre owner and an ancestor of the Barrymore acting family. Professionally, she was often known as Mrs. John Drew.
Jaddanbai Hussain was an Indian singer, music composer, dancer, actress, filmmaker, and one of the pioneers of Indian cinema. She along with Bibbo and Saraswati Devi were one of the first female music composers in Indian cinema. She was the mother of Akhtar Hussain, Anwar Hussain, and the well-known Hindi actress Nargis, and maternal grandmother of Priya Dutt and Sanjay Dutt.
Maria Karnilova was an American dancer and actress. She was initially known legally as Maria Karniloff.
Italia Coppola was the matriarch of the Coppola family. She appeared in three non-speaking roles in her son Francis Ford Coppola's films, One from the Heart, The Godfather Part II, and The Godfather Part III. She was known for her Italian cooking and published a cookbook called Mama Coppola's Pasta Book in 2000. Francis Ford Coppola named his 1998 Edizione Pennino zinfandel after her family's name and Italian heritage, and her nickname "Mammarella" is the name of her pasta and sauce line made by him.
Helen Ware was an American stage and film actress.
Ann Maria Thorne, more widely known as Mrs. French(néeMestayer; 1813 Philadelphia – 20 June 1881 Cornwall-on-Hudson, New York) was an early American concert singer and actress from Philadelphia. As "Mrs. French," she was among the most famous singers in America during the 1820s.
Julienne Marie is an American former actress and singer, best known for her work on the Broadway stage. In addition to her career in theater, Marie appeared in soap operas such as Our Private World (1965) and Ryan's Hope (1978).
Baroness Olga Vadimovna von Root (1901–1967) was a Russian stage actress and singer. Born into a noble family of German, Polish, and Greek background, von Root was educated at the Smolny Institute of Noble Maidens in Russia. As a teenager, she ran away from home and travelled with a Romani family, studying their music and dance. During the Russian Revolution, while her father served in the White Army, von Root performed in cabarets and nightclubs to help support her family. After the war, she performed in Russia and other European countries as a stage actress and singer under the stage name Olga Vadina. She later married American industrialist Armand Hammer and moved to the United States, taking up residence in Manhattan. While living in New York, she worked to transcribe numerous Romani ballads. Von Root is the grandmother of American businessman Michael Armand Hammer and the great-grandmother of American actor Armie Hammer.
It has also been pointed out that even if a woman keeps her maiden name after... Thus some are beginning to take their mothers' first name as last name...
The couple cast about in their families' past and Ms. Wetterlund discovered, well, Wetterlund, her grandmother's maiden name. "We thought it was pretty, and it was quite uncommon", she said. Additionally, "Wetterlund" was in danger of extinction, at least in their family; only one relative still bore the name. So they asked government officials for permission to be called Wetterlund, and permission was granted.
She took her grandmother's name, Bacal, at age eight, eventually adding the second "l" to make it easier to pronounce.
When she was a drama and writing student at the University of Southern California, she substituted her mom's maiden name for "Reagan" and embraced liberal politics, carving out an independent identity from her dad, then the conservative governor.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)Ted Slotover, ITV's Formula One reporter, has seen at first hand that engineers get just as much satisfaction from their contributions to working on a successful car as the drivers.
Dorothea Lange was born Dorothea Margaretta Nutzhorn in 1895, in Hoboken, New Jersey. She dropped her middle name and assumed her mother's maiden name after her father abandoned her and her mother.
His wife, Frances Victory Schenkkan, is a prize-winning poet. One son, Ben McKenzie, who opted to use his middle name, sizzles on the TV cop drama "Southland" after melting hearts on "The O.C." His other sons, both former actors, are involved in nonprofits and the law.
Many of the jolts and tribulations experienced by the three brothers stem from their childhood as the sons of an Arab intellectual father Saliba Khamis and a Jewish mother, Arna Mer, a relentless idealist who joined Maki (the Israeli Communist Party).
The name (an affectation, built around his mother's... maiden name) ...
Romy témoignant par la suite de l'intérêt malsain qu'il lui portait.
waarvan Romy later aangaf dat hij een ongezonde belangstelling voor haar had
Il a clairement proposé de coucher avec moi.
{{cite web}}
: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)[Shelley Winters] was born Shirley Schrift in St. Louis... [H]er stage name came from the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley and from her mother, Rose Winter, an amateur soprano who had once won a Municipal Opera contest in St. Louis.