18| Fergie — Stacy Ann Ferguson
With Black Eyed Peas band mates named will.i.am, apl.de.ap and Taboo, the name Stacy Ferguson just wasn’t going to cut it. After being a member of the children’s TV show “Kids Incorporated” and performing with the girl group “Wild Orchid,” Ferguson quickly changed her name to something that would pop like her music: Fergie.
17| Ben Kingsley — Krishna Pandit Bhanji
Kingsley revealed on “Inside the Actors Studio” he feared a foreign name could hurt his career.
16| Dakota Fanning — Hannah Dakota Fanning
The youngest nominee ever for a Screen Actors Guild Award, Hannah Dakota Fanning goes by her middle name professionally instead of her legal first name.
15| Bono — Paul David Hewson
The name Bono was originally a nickname, short for “Bono Vox” meaning “good voice” in Latin, said to be given by his friend Gavin Friday.
14| Chevy Chase — Cornelius Crane Chase
Cornelius Crane Chase was named after his mother’s adoptive father, Cornelius Vanderbilt Crane, heir to the successful New York company, Crane Plumbing. The nickname Chevy was given by his grandmother, from the medieval English “The Ballad of Chevy Chase.” As a descendant of the Scottish Clan Douglas, she felt the name “Chevy” seemed fitting.
13| Natalie Wood — Natalia Nikolaevna Zakharenko
After being born in San Francisco to Russian immigrant parents in 1938, Wood Americanized her name when she became a child actress at just four-years-old. At age eight, Wood starred in “Miracle on 34th Street” and went on to have a successful, Oscar-nominated acting career as an adult before mysteriously drowning near Santa Catalina Island in 1981 at age 43.
12| Demi Moore — Demetria Gene Guynes
Moore kept the last name of her first husband Freddy Moore after they divorced in 1984.
11| Katy Perry — Kathryn (Katy) Hudson
Before she was a chart-topping singer, Perry was producing Christian music, under her birth name, Kathryn Hudson. She released gospel record Katy Hudson under the former label Red Hill Records before adopting her mother’s maiden name to avoid confusion with this actress Kate Hudson.
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