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Oprah Winfrey speaks out after fans call her by the 'wrong name' for years
Home>Celebrity
Published 14:46 24 Jul 2026 GMT+1

Oprah Winfrey speaks out after fans call her by the 'wrong name' for years

Oprah Winfrey also discussed what she believes is 'one of the biggest mistakes of her career' on Keke Palmer's podcast

Niamh Shackleton

Niamh Shackleton

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Featured Image Credit: Theo Wargo/Getty Images

Topics: Oprah Winfrey, Keke Palmer, Podcast, Entertainment, Celebrity

Niamh Shackleton
Niamh Shackleton

Niamh Shackleton is an experienced journalist for UNILAD, specialising in topics including mental health and showbiz, as well as anything Henry Cavill and cat related. She has previously worked for OK! Magazine, Caters and Kennedy.

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Oprah Winfrey has been a household name for decades, but it turns out the moniker that we know her by isn't her actual birth-given name.

Winfrey recently sat down with Keke Palmer on her extremely popular podcast, Baby, This Is Keke Palmer, where they chatted about a host of different things on the 78 minute-long episode.

One thing they discussed was Winfrey's name, and it's not what you think it is. In fact, Winfrey herself didn't know what her actual birth-given name was until she was '20 or something', she told Palmer.

"I found out that your name was originally Orpah," Palmer, 32, said. Confirming that this is the case, Winfrey said that it comes from the Bible.

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Quizzing her on why she changed her name, Winfrey explained that it wasn't actually her call.

"It's not what made me," said the TV icon, "I was a kid a nobody knew how to spell it."

Oprah Winfrey was recently a guest on Keke Palmer's podcast (@BabythisisKekePalmer/YouTube)
Oprah Winfrey was recently a guest on Keke Palmer's podcast (@BabythisisKekePalmer/YouTube)

Winfrey went on: "It turned out that on birth certificate, it's Orpah, and then people started calling me Oprah. And so it's just a difference between the P being before the R or after the R."

"Once they started with Oprah, that's it," she added. "I didn't learn until I was probably 20 or something that 'Oh, this isn't really my name.'"

Elsewhere in their lengthly conversation, Winfrey revealed what she thinks was a huge mistake in her years-long career — that being The Oprah Winfrey Show theme song titled 'Run On' that she recorded herself in 1998.

"That is one of the mistakes of my career," she said of the track that was only her show's theme song for a short time.

"I was trying to decide, am I going to end the show or not end the show? And then I had a little talk with Jesus, and Jesus said, 'You gotta' keep going.' And so I said, you know, there’s this song. It’s an old spiritual."

After doing her own version of the song, Winfrey then realized that she 'can't sing', despite the fact she took lessons before doing the recording.

Palmer tried to reassure her guest that her song 'wasn't that bad', but Winfrey, 72, wasn't having any of it.

She insisted: "You know it was bad. You’re just saying that because you’re looking at me. It was pretty bad."

'Run On' was only used for a single season of Winfrey's popular talkshow, which aired from 1986 to 2011.

It ended after 25 seasons so that Winfrey, who now has an approximate net worth of $3.4 billion, could launch her own cable channel called Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN).

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