John Lennon’s son Julian Lennon has explained why he legally changed his name.
The son of the late Beatles star, who is also a musician, changed his name in 2020 and has now explained his birth name “never felt like” him.
The 59 year old, who recently performed a cover of ‘Imagine’, changed his name from John Charles Julian Lennon to Julian Charles John Lennon, making his first name Julian and changing John to be part of his middle name.
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During an appearance on the podcast Word In Your Ear, he opened up on his decision to officially change his name and said the pandemic played a role.
“It was in 2020, just before we all got locked in a cage that I finally actually decided to legally change my name by default,” he said.
“Because originally my name was John Charles Julian Lennon, and the crap that I had to deal with when travelling and security companies and this and that and the other.”
He continued: “Whenever you had to present yourself, especially on like boarding passes, just as an example, you know they only use your first name, and so it would always be John Lennon, John Lennon.”
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“The singer-songwriter said that he became “quite fearful and anxious about those scenarios because there would always be wise cracks or jokes and most of the time people didn’t even recognise me”.
“So it became really uncomfortable over the years because I’ve always been known as Julian and so it [being called John] never felt like it was me,” he said.
“So finally I just decided in 2020, ‘Yeah, I wanna be me now. This is it, it’s time for a change.’”
However, despite the name change, he said that he still wants to “respect the legacy and the wishes” of his parents, John and Cynthia Powell.
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“But all I did was switch the ‘John’ and ‘Julian’, so I’m Julian Charles John Lennon. It’s as simple as that, but for me, it’s a whole other world, it really is. Not that I’m ashamed or have disrespect,” he said.
“I needed to be me. I needed to finally be heard as Julian. This is what Julian does, not ‘John’s son,’ so that has been a part of the path and... it just made sense for me.”
Julian is John Lennon’s oldest son from his first marriage to Cynthia. He has a half brother, Sean Lennon, from his father’s second marriage to Yoko Ono.
He releases his new album, Jude, on 9 September.
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