16 celebrities with unusual middle names

Daniel Craig

Whilst James Bond may have just two names, that’s not the case for the 007 actor who’s full name is Daniel Wroughton Craig. As well as being the name of a village in Wiltshire it is also a family name with Daniel’s father’s full name being Timothy John Wroughton Craig.

Ben Affleck

Ben Affleck’s full name is Ben Géza Affleck-Boldt and he has a wonderful story as to why he was given his middle name.
Ben told the Boston Herald: “My mom told me that Géza was a friend of hers who died around the time I was born. He was a Holocaust survivor from Hungary and he was the most exceptional person she knew. He had leapt from a train during the Holocaust taking Jews to the death camps, and he went back to save several other people to try to break them out.
“She told me 6 million Jews were murdered and that men like him, brave and selfless, were what stood between us and the evil that people were capable of doing to one another. That name has never been anything short of a tremendous honor to me since that day. I came to understand and better identify with the suffering of others.”

Courteney Cox

Courteney’s middle name is Bass which was her mother’s (who was also called Courteney) maiden name.
In 1999 Courteney’s name changed to Courteney Cox Arquette when she married David Arquette, the name change was marked in an episode of Friends where all the cast had ‘Arquette’ added to their names in the opening credits!

Adele

Adele is one of those iconic singers who’s known just by her first name meaning plenty of people won’t know her surname let alone her middle names! Adele’s full name is Adele Laurie Blue Adkins.

Hugh Grant

Twitter well and truly blew up when users discovered that Hugh Grant’s full name Hugh John Mungo Grant, with plenty of people dropping the name John just to call him Humungo Grant!

Jennifer Lawrence

Jennifer Lawrence rose to fame for playing Katniss Everdeen in the Hunger Games films but not many people know her middle name. Her full name is Jennifer Shrader Lawrence

Kate Hudson

Oscar-winning actress Kate Hudson has a somewhat unusual middle name but there’s a good reason behind it. Shortly before she was born, Kate’s uncle Garry passed away so her mother Goldie Hawn paid tribute to him through Kate, meaning her full name is Kate Garry Hudson.
Kate has continued with meaningful middle names by giving her son Bingham the middle name Hawn in honour of his grandmother.

Leonardo DiCaprio

Leonardo’s full name is Leonardo Wilhelm DiCaprio, the German middle name comes from his maternal grandfather Wilhelm Indenbirke.

Hilary Duff

Lizzie McGuire actress Hilary Duff’s middle name is Erhard, a middle name she shares with her father Robert Erhard Duff.

Matt Damon

Hollywood star Matt Damon’s middle name is Paige, the family name of his mother Nancy Carlsson-Paige. Nancy comes from Swedish and Finnish descent and her family name had been changed from “Pajari” to “Paige”.

Nicolas Cage

Nicolas Cage’s full birth name is Nicolas Kim Coppola. When Nicolas was trying to get into the acting business he didn’t want to be accused of nepotism as his uncle was Hollywood director Francis Ford Coppola, so he changed his surname to Cage.

Mel Gibson

Mel Gibson’s full name is Mel Colmcille Gerard Gibson, his first two names are shared with Irish saints with connections to the areas of Ireland where his mother was born and raised.

Sacha Baron Cohen

Now you may have thought that Baron was Sacha’s middle name however this is not the case. Baron Cohen is Sacha’s double-barrelled surname, and his full name is Sacha Noam Baron Cohen.

You may know Kiefer Sutherland from TV shows like 24 and Designated Survivor but what you may not know is that his full name is Kiefer William Frederick Dempsey George Rufus Sutherland!

Apparently, Kiefer is after Warren Kiefer, who wrote his father’s first TV role in England. William is a middle name. Dempsey is Kiefer’s mother’s mother’s maiden name. Frederick is his father’s father’s first name. George was his father’s best friend George Metcalfe and Rufus remains a mystery!

Tina Fey

Tina Fey’s first name is actually Elizabeth; she gets Tina from her middle name Stamatina.

Richard Gere

Richard Gere’s middle name is Tiffany, which was his mother’s maiden name.