What is in a name?
Elton John still can’t understand how his parents could have given him the name “S–t” at birth.
“I’m Still Standing” singerThe 77-year-old talked about his given name during an appearance on Tuesday night “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.”
“You weren’t always Elton John,” host Stephen Colbert noted during their conversation. “You were born Reginald Kenneth Dwight, which is also a cute name.”
John did not agree. “It’s just what the name says,” he told the late night host.
“Agree to disagree,” Colbert replied.
However, the Grammy winner explained why he still doesn’t understand the meaning of the name chosen by his parents, Stanley and. Sheila Eileen Dwight.
“After all what do they call – a little child; A small child? ‘Reginald, oh Reginald,’ she asked in surprise.
John recently revealed He lost his eyesight After a transition, some context was provided regarding the origins of her birth name.
He said, “I was named after my mother’s brother because she wanted to call me Raymond, but my father didn’t agree so they had a big argument – which was not unusual – and I became Reginald. And I hated it.”
And although “Reginald” could have been replaced by the somewhat cooler nickname “Reggie”, John did not feel the nickname was any better, telling Colbert that although there were many famous “Reggies” in America, it was not a popular name. Was in Britain. Also, “Reggie” still isn’t his real name.
“It wasn’t ‘Reggie,’ it was Reginald,” he continued. “Like, who is it? As soon as I could change it, I changed it.”
john legally changed his name In 1972.
Attempting to find a silver lining for the star’s given name, Colbert said, “Reginald is the male version of Regina, which means ‘queen.'”
“Thank you,” John responded to laughter from the audience.
“He got it right. In 1947, they knew what they were doing,” he quipped.
Explaining why he replaced “Reginald Kenneth Dwight” with “Elton Hercules John”, the music icon shared that he took inspiration from two members of the British blues band Bluesology, with whom he performed in the ’60s.
“The saxophone player was called Elton Dean. And I thought, ‘Elton! “There aren’t that many Eltons in the world, that’s quite unusual,” the “Tiny Dancer” singer recalled thinking.
His new surname is taken from Bluesology singer Long John Baldry, while his middle name “Hercules” was taken from the horse from a popular British sitcom “Steptoe and Son”.
But changing his name did not have any side effects.
He explained, “The sad thing about it was that by 1975, when I was ‘Elton Hercules John’, ‘Reggae’ was lost, and I was desperate to find the little boy I used to be.”
“I became ‘Elton John: Superstar’ and I paid a price for being so famous and not being on that pedestal.”
“Fame is a very strange thing,” he said. “I enjoyed every single minute of it until I realized that the only thing in my life was fame. I didn’t like it and I became very sad, my mood changed, I started taking drugs and I just thought, ‘Where am I? Who am I? What have I become?’ And that all changed in 1990 when I got sober, when I found my old self again, and it felt so good to be that little boy again.
