What’s in a name?
Elton John still can’t understand how his parents could have given him a “s – – t” birth name.
The “I’m Still Standing” singer, 77, spoke about his given name during an appearance Tuesday night on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.”
“You weren’t always Elton John,” host Stephen Colbert mentioned during their chat. “You were born Reginald Kenneth Dwight, which is also a lovely name.”
John did not agree. “It’s a s – – t name,” he told the late-night host.
“Agree to disagree,” Colbert replied.
The Grammy winner, however, explained why he still can’t make sense of the name choice made by his parents, Stanley and Sheila Eileen Dwight.
“Who the hell calls their — a little baby; a little baby? ‘Reginald, oh Reginald,’” he asked, befuddled.
John, who recently revealed he lost his eyesight after an infection, went on to provide some context to the origins of his birth name.
“I was named after my mum’s brother because she wanted to call me Raymond, but my father disagreed so they had a huge argument — which wasn’t unusual — and I became Reginald and I hated it,” he said.
And though “Reginald” could be swapped for the somewhat cooler sobriquet “Reggie,” John didn’t feel that the nickname was any better, telling Colbert that while there were many famous “Reggies” in the US, it was not a popular name in the UK. Plus, “Reggie” still wouldn’t have been his actual name.
“It wasn’t ‘Reggie,’ it was Reginald,” he continued. “Like, who the hell? As soon as I could change it, I did.”
John legally changed his name in 1972.
Attempting to find a silver lining to the star’s given name, Colbert said, “Reginald’s the male version of Regina, which means ‘queen.’”
“Thank you,” John responded straight-faced to laughter from the audience.
“They got it spot on. In 1947, they knew what they were doing,” he quipped.
Explaining why he exchanged “Reginald Kenneth Dwight” for “Elton Hercules John,” the music icon shared that he took inspiration from two members of the British blues band Bluesology, who he performed with in the ’60s.
“The saxophone player was called Elton Dean. And I thought, ‘Elton! There’s not many Eltons in the world, that’s pretty unusual,’” the “Tiny Dancer” singer recalled thinking.
His new surname derived from Bluesology’s vocalist Long John Baldry, while his middle name “Hercules” was taken from the horse on a popular British sitcom, “Steptoe and Son.”
But changing his name did not come without its side effects.
“The sad thing about it was, by 1975, when I was ‘Elton Hercules John,’ ‘Reg’ had been lost, and I craved to find that little boy that I used to be,” he explained.
“I had become ‘Elton John: Superstar’ and I paid the price for being so famous and not having that foundation.”
“Fame is a very weird thing,” he added. “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 got very unhappy, my moods shifted, I started doing drugs, and I just thought, ‘Where am I? Who am I? What have I become?’ And all that changed in 1990 when I did get sober, when I re-found my old self, and it was lovely to find that little boy again.”