Keke Palmer has now joined Emma Stone in the league of celebrities who would rather go by their given name.
Palmer, who was born Lauren Keyana Palmer, revealed that she doesn’t want to go by Keke and would rather everyone call her Lauren.
“I actually don’t prefer to go by Keke instead of Lauren,” Palmer told Glamour Magazine in 2022. However, the interview clip recently resurfaced on TikTok.
Palmer, who guest co-hosted Jenna & Friends in January, explained to Glamour Magazine that Keke was originally just a nickname used by people in her family. However, since Palmer was a child actress, the nickname developed into her well-known moniker after a manager overheard it.
“One day, my manager at that time heard my mom call me Keke because I wasn’t listening,” Palmer said. “So, she was like ‘Keke. Keke!’ And he said, ‘That’s — that should be your stage name.'”
Palmer’s IMDb has her first body of work (“Barbershop 2: Back in Business”) in 2004 giving credit to Lauren ‘Keke’ Palmer, but the rest of her work drops the Lauren, crediting just Keke Palmer.
“It went from just something that my family called me to being something that the whole world called me,” Palmer said. “And more than anything, I would love to go back to Lauren.”
Fans in the comment section of the TikTok clip Glamour Magazine posted of the interview immediately understood Palmer’s wish to be called Lauren.
“Understood. . . it makes me cringe when ppl outside my family call me my family nickname lol,” one commenter wrote.
While another said “Baby! That’s Lauren Palmer!” referencing Palmer’s podcast, “Baby, This is Keke Palmer.”
“She looks like a Lauren,” another observed.
Despite the interview being from 2022, many fans seemed unaware of Palmer’s wish to be called Lauren.
“I had no idea!! I’ll gladly call her Lauren Palmer!” one fan wrote, while another didn’t even know Keke wasn’t her birth name, writing “I had NO idea her name is Lauren.”
Palmer’s wish to be called by her given name instead of her famous stage name isn’t the first time a celebrity has missed their birth name. In 2017, Emma Stone told E! News that she’d rather people call her by her given name: Emily.
“My real name is Emily Stone, but when I started acting, that name was already taken by another actress, so I had to come up with a different one,” she said, noting that she had to make the choice at 16-years-old.
Stone said that for about six months, she went by Riley, but she had trouble answering to it, so she changed her name to Emma.
