Sometimes you need to change your name to make it in Hollywood or the music business. Plenty of today's biggest celebrities don't go by their birth names, such as Lady Gaga or Natalie Portman.
But you probably aren't familiar with how they ended up with their current monikers.
The reasons why they changed their names vary. Katy Perry and Emma Stone opted for a change to avoid clashing with stars who shared their birth names. Others, like Bruno Mars and Michael Caine, were simply inspired. And yes, Snoop Dogg's stage name was influenced by the famous cartoon dog.
Public records company Intelius provided INSIDER with even more real names of celebrities to supplement our research. Keep reading to learn the story behind some of music and Hollywood's biggest names.
Aly Weisman contributed to a previous version of this story.
Mila Kunis — Milena Markovna Kunis
At the age of seven, Milena Markovna Kunis and her family moved from Ukraine to Los Angeles, California.
Mila's mother, Elvira, and father, Mark, soon enrolled her in acting classes and allowed Mila to shorten her name when she started booking her first roles on "Days of our Lives,""7th Heaven," and playing a young Angelina Jolie in "Gia."
Ben Affleck — Benjamin Geza Affleck-Boldt
Boldt is his mother’s maiden name. The "Batman v Superman" actor’s middle name was inspired by a parent’s Hungarian friend.
"When I got to be in fourth or fifth grade, I accused them of being the worst namers in the world! I said, Everyone calls me Ben Gay!" Affleck told Glamour. "But she [Affleck’s mother] told me that Geza was a friend of hers who died right around the time I was born, who was a Holocaust survivor in Hungary, and the most exceptional person she knew."
"He had left from a train during the Holocaust taking Jews to death camps, and he went back and saved several others returning to break them out," he continued. "She told me six million Jews were murdered and that men like him were brave and selfless. That name has never been short of a tremendous honor to me since that day."
John Legend — John Rogers Stevens
Chrissy Teigen's singer husband was given to him by his friend and poet J. Ivy who said he thought his music sounded like "one of the [old-school] legends," according to Intelius.
"It was bold and I knew people would be like 'He'd better be good if he's going to call himself John Legend,'" Legend told The New York Times in 2006. ''So I said, 'Let me go out and make the best music I can and maybe, after my career is over, I've lived up to the name.'"'
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