Oprah Winfrey explains her real name after using the ‘wrong’ one for 50 years
Oprah Winfrey is a titan of television, but it turns out she's been using the wrong name throughout her entire career.
From hosting one of television's most famous talk shows for 25 years and running one of the world's biggest book clubs to being run over by super fan Josh Nichols in Drake and Josh, Winfrey is a renowned figure whose fame stretches well beyond her native United States of America.
Like Madonna or Sting, Oprah has become an iconic name that will forever be associated with just one person (though there are two Stings, to be fair), with her surname not required.
Yet, it all could have been so different as she wasn't born as Oprah at all but instead as Orpah.
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That's a small change that makes a huge difference.
Speaking on the Baby, This is Keke Palmer podcast, the renowned interviewer turned interviewee and was asked to retell the story about how her name came to be straight off the bat.
"I found out that your name, it was originally Orpah," Palmer said, being unable to hide her surprise.
Orpah is a biblical figure in the Book of Ruth, who is also identified as Harapha, the mother of the Philistine giant Goliath, of losing a fight to the world's biggest underdog, David, fame.
"It’s that whole Ruth and Naomi story. Ruth said: “Wherever thy goest, I will go," Winfrey replied, referencing the story in which Orpah returned to her people and her gods rather than travel with her mother-in-law Naomi and sister-in-law Ruth to Judea following the death of her husband, Moab.
Winfrey added: “I’m going back. I’m sorry. I can’t. Too long. The road’s too long.”‘
Oprah explains her real name
Palmer pressed on, curious to know why Winfrey decided to make the change to her name, asking: "Now, what made you go to Oprah?’"
As it turns out, Winfrey didn't decide to make the change at all, it just happened as nobody in her rural Mississippi home could spell the name correctly.
"It’s not what made me, I was a kid," she explained.
"Nobody knew how to spell it. So it turned out on my birth certificate, it’s Orpah but then people started calling me Oprah. It’s just the difference of the ‘p’ being before the ‘r’ or after the ‘r’.
"Once they started with Oprah, that’s it."
As it turns out, Winfrey herself didn't even realise she'd been using the wrong name throughout her life and has Orpah on her birth certificate until she was about 20.
By then, there was no going back.
Now 72, she's continued to use the wrong name for more than 50 years.
Winfrey has discussed the unusual origins of her name before, with each new generation learning the quirk and being astounded.
Way back in 1991, speaking in an interview with the Academy of Achievement, she explained that there was ‘not a lot of educated people around’ when she was growing up.
"My Aunt Ida had chosen the name, but nobody really knew how to spell it, so it went down as “Orpah” on my birth certificate," she said.
"But people didn’t know how to pronounce it, so they put the “P” before the “R” in every place else other than the birth certificate.
"On the birth certificate it is Orpah, but then it got translated to Oprah, so here we are. But that’s great because Oprah spells Harpo backwards. I don’t know what Orpah spells."
Daniel Murphy