Olivia Wilde reveals her 'devastating' real last name and how to actually pronounce it

Olivia Wilde has opened up about how she changed her name when she became an actor for one particular reason.

Many actors take on a stage name which is different from the name they were born with, for example Nicolas Cage was actually born Nicolas Coppola and is the nephew of Francis Forde Coppola, but took the stage name Cage early in his career before legally changing it in 2025.

Wilde spoke to Dax Shepard on his podcast Armchair Expert, where she opened up about the effect that her surname had on her life, and why she made the decision to use a stage name when she broke into the film and TV industry.

The conversation turned to childhood, with Wilde joking about her son Otis deliberately pulling a sad face when having a picture taken to make it seem like he was always upset, which prompted Shepard to ask about her own childhood.

Wilde opened up about her legal surname (Araya Doheny/Getty Images for SAG-AFTRA Foundation)

"The pictures thing could be a little telling because I have both envy and perhaps not envy," he said, "because mom and dad, Andrew and Leslie, are gangsters, the Cockburns, they're both journalists right?"

He pronounced Wilde's legal surname 'Cockburn' as it's spelled, prompting the actor and director to politely correct him.

"I'll tell you something - and there's no way you would know this - it's pronounced 'Coburn'," she said, adding: "Which I want you to imagine being a kid..."

"Well of course I'm curious about what it's like to be a young girl with a last name spelled Cockburn," said Shepard.

"It's a Scottish name, and it's very much like Boy Named Sue you know what I mean? Like it's character building," she said, referencing a Johnny Cash song.

She went on to joke: "We should all give our kids devastating middle names just so that you can grow up with like something to be totally bullied for."

Wilde took on the name of one of her literary heroes (Mike Coppola/Getty Images for BAFTA)

Shepard went on to ask about the impact that having a name like this had on her growing up.

"I think it was an early important lesson in laughing along - not in a way that was, like, giving in to the bullies in a way," Wilde explained.

She added, "I don't know - I thought it was funny too. I was like, 'Oh, I get it. That's funny'."

Wilde chose her stage name after a literary idol of hers - Irish writer Oscar Wilde.

Her parents Andrew Cockburn and Leslie Redlich are both journalists, with her dad being the Washington DC editor at Harper's Magazine, while her mom worked as an investigative journalist who worked for for CBS, NBC, and PBS Frontline.