with this surname, i thee wed....

i have googled till i am blue in the face, isn't there an obvious list somewhere of celebs who have taken their husband's surnames?

i thought this would be a piece of cake. especially wrt/ pre-liberation 50s or so. yet the only one i can find is...ROSEANNE ARNOLD!!!! (and soon katy brand, maybe?)

i figure there was a whole slew of them back in the elizabeth taylor/katherine hepburn/greta garbo era, yet i can't come up with even ONE! and even in recent years, the best i can find is a few hyphenated types (pamela anderson [lee], farrah fawcett [majors], shirley temple [black], etc). where's a flat out nancy davis -> nancy reagan type example?!

er..ok, so there's ONE. but how about a LIST somewhere?!

:confused

 

The thing you run into with celebrities, especially if they are union actors, is that the name they are known by is their name under copyright. No one else can use that name. Ever. Which means that even if legally they do change their names (which is pretty rare), their professional name remains the same.

But now I'm curious, and will spend a fair portion of tomorrow looking for a list for you. Too tired tonight to do it.

 

I don't think there's any "copyright" involved; it's just an internal SAG rule to prevent overlapping listings. I mean, there's 2 Vanessa Williams, 2 Bob Marleys, 2 Englebert Humperdinks, etc...so they just register one or t'other with a middle initial.

(OK, Englebert might have been a tad before SAG, but the others... :-D )

In any case, I mean their public names. I'm sure a lot of them have changed names on paper (Marilyn DiMaggio? Lucille Arnaz?), but I mean a high-profile one who changed to all the world after a marriage. "Elizabeth Burton", "Jennifer Pitt", "Yoko Lennon"....SOMEONE!

Aside from Roseanne and Nancy Davis, the only "near miss" I can think of was Grace Kelly. I always thought she went by Grace Rainier after her marriage...but google implies otherwise.

 

I suspect many don't precisely because it is like a brand or trademark. There are also those who use a stage name like Marilyn Monroe aka Norma Jean Baker, whose legal name may have changed but still performed under the assumed name.

 

i am aware that "many" don't, but i still figured i could come up with 20 or 30 who do/did, without even thinking hard.

now after heavy googling and close to a day, the best i've got is 2, maybe 3!

 

Sorry, I misspoke. You'll have that at 3:30 am when I'm just getting home from work. Obviously you understand it better than me, so I'll just leave you to it.

 

HUH?

did i say anything snippy?

:confused

 

I don't think so Cat. I think Sgt Tibbs is saying she doesn't think clearly at 3:30 in the morning.
As related to for your question, I don't know about celebs, but I notice even "regular" people are opting to keep their surnames. My sister is one, and my daughter is wedding next year and I think she is keeping hers. My wife took mine probably because her name had ten letters and mine has four:-D.

 

OK, thanks. i thought i was getting *slapped* for being rude or sumpin!

re: "shorter name", i have long called pam anderson "pam lee", especially during her married years. so that would qualify as a good example for this thread...except that i think few others do likewise. google reveals most people using "anderson" or "anderson lee".

i've thought of one good example while sitting here festering. jackie kennedy --> jackie onassis. while the combined "kennedy onassis" was fairly common when using "jacqueline", i think plain ole onassis was the default when combined w "jackie".

of course, kennedy wasn't her maiden name either, but at least we've got ONE major celeb using two diff "era" names....

so....

Jackie Kennedy/Onassis
Nancy Davis/Reagan
Roseanne Barr/Arnold
Katy Perry/Brand

my list so far.



PS: I should note that Roseanne also falls on ANOTHER list of celebs who've hung onto a married name even after a divorce....a la Demi Moore and Susan Sarandon....