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Comedians

Comedians' Real Names: Who They Were Born As, and Why They Changed

Learn the birth names of famous comedians like Rodney Dangerfield and Jon Stewart, and the practical and personal reasons they chose new ones.

By Written Facts StaffOctober 13, 20267 min read

You've seen a credit roll past or a trivia question pop up on game night and stopped at a name you didn't expect. Rodney Dangerfield was really Jacob Cohen? Many of the best-known comedians perform under names they picked themselves. Their reasons are usually practical rather than glamorous. Some needed to avoid a mix-up, some took advice from an agent and some honored a hero. One wanted to make sure the audience didn't recognize him.

The short answer: famous comedians and their birth names

Here are eight well-known comedians, with each stage name followed by the name on the birth record:

Rodney Dangerfield: Jacob Cohen, born November 22, 1921, in Babylon, New York
Jon Stewart: Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz, born November 28, 1962
Whoopi Goldberg: Caryn Elaine Johnson, born November 13, 1955
Joan Rivers: Joan Alexandra Molinsky, born June 8, 1933, in Brooklyn
Mel Brooks: Melvin Kaminsky
Redd Foxx: John Elroy Sanford, born December 9, 1922, in St. Louis
Jamie Foxx: Eric Marlon Bishop
Lenny Bruce: Leonard Alfred Schneider, born October 13, 1925, in Mineola, New York

Three of the eight were born in November, which makes the Thanksgiving stretch a birthday season for comedy. Dangerfield and Stewart were born less than a week apart, 41 years apart.

Several patterns show up in the list. Some performers kept their first name and swapped only the last one, like Mel, Joan and Lenny. Others replaced the whole name. Jon Stewart's change looks like a simple respelling of his middle name, but it has its own story, covered near the end.

The reasons fall into a few groups. The first group is the most ordinary: the old name caused problems.

Names changed to avoid confusion or to fit a marquee

Mel Brooks had a problem that many performers would envy: his name was already famous, but it belonged to someone else. As a young performer, Melvin Kaminsky kept getting confused with the jazz trumpeter Max Kaminsky. AARP tells the story more specifically: a hotel "was expecting the famous trumpeter Max Kaminsky, not Mel Kaminsky." Other accounts describe only a general mix-up.

To fix it, he looked to his mother's maiden name, Brookman. Brooks was a drummer at the time, and according to Wikipedia he found "Brookman" "too long to fit on his drums." He shortened it to Brooks.

Joan Rivers made her change after professional advice. Wikipedia says an agent named Tony Rivers told Joan Molinsky to change her name, and she took his surname. "Joan Rivers" is shorter, easier to say and easy to remember.

Lenny Bruce went through a trial run first. According to Wikipedia, Leonard Schneider's first time on stage came as a stand-in master of ceremonies at one of his mother's shows, under the name "Lenny Marsalle." That name didn't last. By 1947, when he gave his first paid stand-up performance in Brooklyn, he was Lenny Bruce.

None of these three hid their identities. They wanted names that worked better in the business. Other comedians chose names that said something about who they were or whom they admired.

Names picked as a tribute or a nickname

Redd Foxx started with a nickname. In the 1940s, John Sanford washed dishes alongside Malcolm Little, who later became Malcolm X. Little was called "Detroit Red," and Sanford was "Chicago Red." Ebony later reported that the stage name came from three things: his red hair, his "foxy style of dress" and his admiration for the baseball slugger Jimmie Foxx. Foxx explained the doubled letters to People: "the extra letter was so people would remember it."

Jamie Foxx borrowed from that same name for practical reasons. As Eric Bishop, he did a set at an open mic, and the comics who ran the list wouldn't book him again. He had noticed that organizers put only a few women on each lineup, so women were more likely to get stage time. He signed up again as "Jamie," a name that could belong to a woman. For the surname, he chose "Foxx" as a tribute to Redd Foxx, the star of Sanford and Son. One stage name ended up inspiring another.

Whoopi Goldberg's first name comes from a prank toy. She has said people told her she was like a whoopee cushion, and "Whoopi" came from that. She has also said "Goldberg" is a family name. Biography.com gives a simpler reason: she found her given name, Caryn Johnson, "too boring." Both stories may be true.

A tribute or a nickname tells the audience something about the performer. Rodney Dangerfield wanted a name that did the opposite.

Rodney Dangerfield: a name built to hide someone

Rodney Dangerfield's stage name came after he had already changed his name once. Jacob Cohen legally changed his name to Jack Roy as a young man (at 19, according to Wikipedia) and performed as Jack Roy in the 1940s.

That career didn't take off, and he left show business for years. When he decided to try again, his old name was a problem. He wanted a fresh start, and he didn't want club patrons who remembered Jack Roy from the 1940s to recognize him. He needed a name that had no history.

The name came from George McFadden, the owner of the Inwood Lounge, who suggested "Rodney Dangerfield." Dangerfield himself admitted, "I don't know where it came from." Wikipedia suggests a possible source: The Jack Benny Program on NBC radio used the name for a character in 1941. If McFadden did borrow it from there, he may have been remembering a radio show from years earlier.

Jacob Cohen went from Jack Roy to Rodney Dangerfield and found success under the third name. The man famous for "I don't get no respect" became a star under a name he didn't choose and couldn't explain.

A name change that is a character, not a disguise

Larry the Cable Guy's name has a different purpose. Daniel Lawrence Whitney, born February 17, 1963, first did stand-up "under his real name with limited success," according to Wikipedia. Things changed when he created the Cable Guy character on a Florida radio station in 1992. Whitney has said he started by calling in political commentary with "a right-wing, Archie Bunker slant." The character caught on, and Whitney eventually became better known by the character's name than his own. The voice, the attitude and the name are all part of the act, and the performer behind it is Dan Whitney.

Jon Stewart's change is the opposite: it was personal. According to Wikipedia, Jonathan Leibowitz stopped using his father's surname after his parents divorced when he was eleven and he became largely estranged from his father. He has also joked that "Leibowitz" "sounded too Hollywood." He made the change legal in 2001, after he was already famous as Jon Stewart.

Most stage names solve practical problems like a mix-up, a long surname or a need for a fresh start. Some reflect something more personal, like Stewart's.

Sources (18)

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