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The basketball veteran and former “Prince of Midair” got the nickname “World” from his high school days in Brooklyn, for his 360-degree dunks and 44-inch jumps, which earned him a 13-year career in the NBA. He made “World” his legal name in 1981, while playing for the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Do you know who Laurence Tureaud is? How about James Brian Hellwig? Check out The Daily Beast's list of celebrities who changed their regular ol' birth names to something outrageous. These are names you'll never forget.
The eccentric Los Angeles Lakers forward has filed papers to the Los Angeles County Supreme Court to officially change his name to “Metta World Peace." “Metta” is a Buddhist term for the virtue of kindness, and Artest, who received the 2011 NBA citizenship award, may be trying to channel, in his own way, a more wholesome image. Still, this is also the basketball star who once admitted to downing halftime whiskey shots and thanked his psychiatrist after an NBA finals win.
Fortunately, spontaneous name-changes aren’t as permanent as tattoos. Cincinnati Bengals wideout Chad Johnson changed his name to Ochocinco at the beginning of the 2008 season, before deciding to take back Johnson this January. He had changed his surname so that he could wear his nickname on his jersey, but like “Jr.” or “Peanut,” it just got old. “I don’t have a choice right now,” he told ESPN. “I’ve done enough with the Ocho thing.”
Prince’s 1993 flip was actually a strategic jump through a legal loophole: The artist changed his name to breach a contract with Warner Brothers that was valid only for “Prince.” The unpronounceable “symbol of love” was the artist’s new alias of choice, forcing the public to refer to him as “The Artist Formerly Known as Prince.” “I was born Prince and did not want to adopt another conventional name,” Prince explained. “The only acceptable replacement for my name, and my identity, was the Love Symbol, a symbol with no pronunciation, that is a representation of me and what my music is about.” Once the contract expired, Prince was free to go back to his birth name.
In 1976, Stevens nearly drowned off the coast of Malibu, and as he struggled in the water, he has said he shouted, “Oh God! If you save me I will work for you!” During his recovery, his brother gave him a copy of the Koran, and thus began his Islamic conversion. After officially adopting the religion in 1977, the artist changed his name to Yusuf Islam, the Muslim name for Joseph. “I had found the spiritual home I’d been seeking for most of my life. And if you listen to my music and lyrics, like ‘Peace Train’ and ‘On the Road to Find Out,’ it clearly shows my yearning for direction and the spiritual path I was traveling,” Stevens told Rolling Stone in 2009.
Though his recent name change to “Swag” on Twitter only lasted a week, Sean Combs has had quite an evolutionary series of stage names. After making a name for himself as the rap recording artist Puff Daddy, Combs changed his name to P. Diddy following his acquittal on gun possession and bribery charges in 2001. In 2005 he dropped the P, announcing on the "Today" show that the offending letter was “getting between me and my fans.”
He may have won a WWF championship and defeated Hulk Hogan during "WrestleMania VI," but all that just wasn’t macho enough for James Brian Hellwig, so he changed his name to Warrior in 1993. The fierce name and its matching character even brought Hellwig a series of lawsuits after the WWF claimed it owned both the “Warrior” and “Ultimate Warrior” names under contract. The court eventually ruled that Hellwig had a right to his own nickname, and his children now use “Warrior” as their legal surname.
The basketball veteran and former “Prince of Midair” got the nickname “World” from his high school days in Brooklyn, for his 360-degree dunks and 44-inch jumps, which earned him a 13-year career in the NBA. He made “World” his legal name in 1981, while playing for the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Celebrity tough guy Mr. T wasn’t always known by a single letter. Born Laurence Tureaud, it wasn’t until he became a bouncer that his “Mr. T” persona began to come to life. His wearing of excessive bling began after he started collecting the gold neck chains patrons would leave behind after a fight. Mr. T eventually grew so famous for his strong-man image that he began to enter strength and boxing competitions, well aware of his own fire. “I just feel sorry for the guy who I have to box. I just feel real sorry for him,” he told "Today" before a match.
