Call her by her name.
Olivia Wilde set the record straight on how to pronounce her real last name, Cockburn.
“I’ll tell you something. And there’s no way you would know this. It’s pronounced Coburn (KOH-burn),” the director told Dax Shepard and Monica Padman on the “Armchair Expert” podcastMonday.
“It’s spelled Cockburn. It’s a Scottish name. It’s very much like Boy Name Sue … like, it’s character building,” the 42-year-old added.
“I think it’s important — we should all give our kids devastating middle names. Just so that you can grow up with something to be totally bullied for.”
Though Wilde said she was made fun of for her unique last name, she believes it was an “early important lesson” in being able to laugh along.
“I thought it was funny, too. I was like, ‘Oh, I get it,’” she recalled.
The actress chose to change her last name to Wilde in high school to honor the legendary Irish author and poet Oscar Wilde.
In a previous interview with Playboy, the “Don’t Worry Darling” star said she also wanted to honor the writers in her family, “many of whom created pen names for their careers.”
“I have a grandfather who changed his name to James Helvick to write the novel ‘Beat the Devil’, which got turned into a movie with Humphrey Bogart,” she shared.
“I always thought having a pen name was so romantic. I honestly didn’t foresee that people would look at it as a sexy name, like, ‘She’s wiiiild!’” Wilde added.
“Anytime a story is written about me, the title is usually some pun on my last name: ‘Born to Be Wilde’ or ‘Take a Walk on the Wilde Side.’ I don’t mind it; it’s just not something I ever considered when I picked the name.”
Wilde’s mom, Leslie Cockburn, is an award-winning investigative journalist, documentary filmmaker and author who produced for “60 Minutes.”
As for her dad, Andrew Cockburn, he is a British journalist, author and magazine editor who produced documentaries for PBS.
Wilde’s paternal grandfather and some of her aunts and uncles are also writers and journalists.
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