What is an American name? What Bob Dylan and Chloe Bennet have in common.
Some of the biggest names in entertainment industry were Wonsal, Gershowitz, Bulsara, Beilin, Konigsberg. Don’t recognize any of them? Perhaps you are more familiar with the Anglicized versions: Warner, Gershwin, Mercury, Berlin, and Allen?
After my last article on the music industry’s celebration of AAPI Heritage Month, I was invited to talk about it on the Break the Business podcast. While chatting off-camera, my host mentioned how Chloe Wang found success as an actor only after she changed her name to Chloe Bennet.
The host pointed out that many of the celebrities of AAPI heritage do not use an Asian name professionally. It doesn’t always happen on purpose, as many of the white-passing AAPI celebrities were born with non-ethnic last names. Michelle Branch, Chrissy Teigen, Vanessa Hudgens are some examples. But it does seem that most white-passing (or Black-passing) AAPI do not draw attention to their AAPI heritage in their names.
Assimilation of other ethnicities
Taking on a more “American” name is nothing new. In the past, celebrities with Jewish, Polish, or Italian names often used a stage name that was more palatable to Hollywood. It’s strange to think that, not so long ago, these names were not considered “American”…
