NOT EVERY ARTIST WAS BORN WITH A COOL NAME

Does Sting's wife call him Sting? Discover the real names of 10 stars

Image: Tim Mossholder

Not every artist is born with a name that is destined for greatness. Not every artist has parents as cool as Prince did, who actually named their son Prince Rogers Nelson. Most of the famous musicians, actors, and actresses we know were born with normal, middle-of-the-road names, like the rest of us. And, while many have decided to keep their given names, some have changed their monikers to something better suited to their chosen identities. The following ten are examples of successful artists who made this bold move. Did you know already any one of these?

Image: David Preston

Perhaps the greatest rock and roll star of all time, the Thin White Duke, reinvented himself and his whole style every few years. David Bowie’s name has become an icon in itself, but that wasn’t always the case.

Back in 1966, when the young David Jones was 18 and taking his first steps under the spotlight, he changed his name to avoid confusion with another British musician of the same name, Davy Jones, who later became the frontman for The Monkees. Bowie chose his moniker as a homage to the Bowie knife and James Bowie, a famous American pioneer.

Image: Jon Tyson

Another name that has long turned into an icon is Bob Dylan. Until 1962, his name was Robert Zimmerman and the most popular theory about why he chose Dylan was that it was done as an homage to poet Dylan Thomas. But the Nobel Prize winner has denied this a few times.

Apparently, the name came to him as a mixture of his own nickname, Bob, and the last name of jazz artist David Allyn. That same name, Allyn, sounded similar to Dylan, which the singer-songwriter preferred.

Image: Alexander Wark Feeney

While it may come as a surprise that some famous people’s names are not their real ones, others are quite obviously fabricated. Lady Gaga’s parents gave their daughter the more standardized name of Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta.

The young Stefani’s friends gave her the name Gaga after a lyric from the Queen song "Radio Ga Ga," which sounded similar to Lady Gaga.

Image: Austin Loveing

Elvis Costello may not have been born with that name but his parents gave him an even more flamboyant title: Declan Patrick Aloysius Macmanus. Granted, that name might have probably worked wonders for him in other endeavors, but in the realm of showbiz, shorter and easier-to-remember names are preferred.

And probably that is why ol’ Declan eventually chose a stage name after signing his first recording contract, combining ‘Elvis’ from Elvis Presley and his own father’s stage name, Costello.

Image: Andrik Langfield

Is Elton John an elegant name? You bet. Especially with the added "Sir." Is it real? Not a chance. Sir Elton was born Reginald Kenneth Dwight, a very British name indeed, but apparently not the one he wanted for his career.

The Rocket Man creator started going by the name "Elton John" in honor of saxophonist Elton Dean and singer Long John Baldry.

Image: Edward Cisneros

A name so iconic that it doesn’t even need a last name, Cher is, in fact, short for the Pop Goddess's real name, Cherilyn, whose full birth certificate name is Cherilyn Sarkisian.

But before deciding to go with Cher, she recorded songs under the names Bonnie Jo Mason and Cherilyn. Even when she formed a duo with Sonny Bono, they went by "Caesar & Cleo," before landing on "Sonny & Cher."

Image: Noah Näf

When you sing as incredibly well as Freddie Mercury did, you can name yourself anything you want and people will come. But the man who gave us "Bohemian Rhapsody" thought that his birthname, Farrokh Bulsara, was not the best suited for his career.

The Queen frontman legally changed his name to Freddie Mercury around 1970, when the band was formed.

Image: Tim Gouw

Stevland Hardaway Judkins was a wonder from a very early age. In 1961, 11-year-old Stevie was discovered by Ronnie White of the Motown group the Miracles. After a meeting at Motown Records, Berry Gordy renamed the young prodigy "Little Stevie Wonder," later dropping the "Little" as he matured.

Image: Marc Schulte

It probably won’t be a shock to know that Sting, the British musician, wasn’t born with that name. Instead, his parents gave him the most normal name of Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner.

While in school, Sumner played in local clubs as part of bands called Pheonix Jazzmen and Last Exit. It was one of his Pheonix Jazzmen bandmates who first dubbed Sumner, "Sting." The nickname stemmed from a black-and-yellow striped sweater he often wore while performing. And it stuck.

Image: Yvette de Wit

Another rock star who decided that surnames were not a good look for him is U2’s frontman, Bono. Paul Hewson was born and raised in Ireland. While still in his teens, he was a member of a group called "Lypton Village."

One evening, hanging out on the street across from a local hearing aid shop called Bono Vox, his friends decided that such a name would be a good nickname for Paul because, in addition to being an Irish hearing aid company, "Bono Vox" means ‘good voice’ in Latin. At one point, Mr. Hewson dropped the "Vox," and from then on, became known simply as Bono.

Words filled with meaning

The meaning behind 11 popular acronyms and initialisms

Compared to other languages, English employs a relatively high number of acronyms and initialisms. According to linguists, this happens because English words tend to be short, and the word order is quite strict. While initialisms are easy to distinguish because they are not pronounced as a word, we don’t always recognize acronyms, especially when they refer to everyday things. Here are 11 popular acronyms and initialisms and their meaning.

When the scuba was invented in 1952 by Christian J. Lambertsen, it had a different name that, coincidentally, was also an acronym. Lambertsen had named his invention LARU, or ‘Lambertsen Amphibious Respiratory Unit’, but he changed it when it was time to apply for a patent. The name in the patent application was SCUBA, after ‘Self-Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus’. Nowadays, scuba is a word of its own and has developed into words like scuba-diving.

In 1955, scientists who had developed a microwave radiation technology patented it as MASER or ‘Microwave Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation’. A few years later, American physicist Gordon Gould developed a similar technology, this time using light instead of microwaves. Following the pattern of MASER, he registered it as LASER or ‘Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation’. While the scientific community initially referred to this technology as the "optical maser", Gould’s acronym quickly became the preferred term.

If you’ve ever used the phrase "ATM machine", you need to know that you’re saying ‘machine’ twice. But don’t worry, this is a common error stemming from the fact that many people don’t know that ATM stands for ‘Automated Teller Machine’, a name that creates a parallelism between ATMs and bank tellers. Although the ATM was installed in 1967 in a London bank, no one really knows who was the first to call it ‘ATM’ instead of ‘cash-dispensing machine’.

The use of radio waves as a detection mechanism dates back to the late 19th century, but it was not properly developed until the 1920s, when the U.S. Navy started creating the first modern radars. By the Second World War, most military powers were using radio wave detection, but the technology did not have a name. In 1940, Lieutenant-Commanders Samuel M. Tucker and F. R. Furth of the U.S. Navy decided to come up with a code name and, after trying several phrases, landed on ‘Radio Detection And Ranging’, or RADAR.

If you are not familiar with the term CAPTCHA, you might recognize it as the test used by websites to make sure that you are human and not a robot. While clicking a box or selecting a picture is simple for a human, it’s extremely hard for a machine. What does the term CAPTCHA stand for? ‘Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart’. The name contains a reference to the Turing test —a method used to check if machines can behave like humans— and the acronym also functions as a portmanteau of ‘capture’ and ‘gotcha’.

If you follow international politics, you might have heard about NATO, a military alliance between several countries, the U.S. included. But have you ever wondered what NATO stands for? This alliance was established with the signing of the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty by several European and North American nations, and its name stands for ‘North Atlantic Treaty Organization’.

The discussions around GIF tend to focus on whether it’s pronounced "gif" or "jif", and one would think that the meaning of the acronym would shed some light on the matter, but it doesn’t. GIF stands for ‘Graphics Interchange Format’, a reference to its development to transfer compressed images across computers. While the ‘g’ in ‘graphic’ would suggest that the correct pronunciation is "gif", creator Steve Wilhite has stated that the acronym was modelled after the peanut butter brand Jif, and should be pronounced in the same way.

The BBC is one of the most famous broadcasters in the world, and its name is so iconic that it has evolved from an initialism to the official name for the company. Established in 1923 as the British Broadcasting Company, initialized as BBC, it became officially known as the BBC when the company transitioned from private to public. The BBC has become so connected with standard British culture that "BBC English" has been historically promoted as the standard speech for newscasters and network announcers.

Nowadays, we use the term CEO in corporate settings, but did you know that its origins are military and political? The first records of CEO as ‘Chief Executive Officer’ date back to legal and government texts from the 1780s, and the term is used in reference to leaders and state governors. However, the term would not become popular until the 1970s, when it was adopted by the corporate world for the highest-ranking person in a company.

When acronyms for an invention include a name, it’s often the name of its inventor. But sometimes, as it happened with the TASER, they include a name that has nothing to do with the person behind the invention. The TASER was developed by Jack Cover, but its acronym stands for ‘Tom A. Swift's Electric Rifle’. Who is Tom Swift? The protagonist of the 1911 science fiction novel_._ Cover added the ‘A’ initial to the name to make the acronym easier to pronounce.

When the U.S. Postal Service created its postal code system, also known as a ZIP code, they used an acronym for the name, but the meaning of the acronym was not really important. ZIP stands for ‘Zone Improvement Plan’, but this phrase doesn’t make complete sense. This is because the USPS was more interested in using the name ZIP to convey the idea that using postal codes would make deliveries faster and more efficient than what these letters stood for.