Olivia Wilde confirms her real last name, and how to properly pronounce it

Olivia Wilde has confirmed her name change, correcting Dax Shepard on how to correctly pronounce her real last name.

On an episode of Shepard’s podcast Armchair Expert, Wilde revealed her real last name is Cockburn, explaining to Shepard that it’s actually pronounced ‘Co-burn’.

“It’s spelled Cockburn. It’s a Scottish name and it is very much like Boy Named Sue, you know what I mean?” She said.

“Like it’s character building ... we should all give our kids like devastating middle names just so that you can grow up with something to be totally bullied for.”

The conversation came up when Shepard wanted to talk about Wilde’s parents, referring to them by the last name Cockburn, which prompted Wilde to correct his pronunciation.

She said that going through school with her last name was an “important lesson” in not taking things too seriously.

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“Like laughing along, not in a way that was giving into the bullies ... like I thought it was funny too. I was like ‘Oh I get it. That’s funny’,” she said.

“And it’s up for grabs on who is it worse for, if you’re a girl or boy? Like, did my brother get it worse? He’s nine years younger than me.”

Shepard pointed out that maybe “life was nicer nine years later,” but Wilde didn’t seem entirely convinced.

“I don’t know. Have we [gotten nicer]?” she said.

The actress chose to change her name when in high school, picking Wilde as a tribute to the legendary author, Oscar Wilde.

Coming from a long line of writers and journalists, Wilde explained in a previous interview with Playboy that she chose to change her last name after being inspired by others in her family who had opted to create a “pen name” for their career.

“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 said.

“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!’

“Anytime a story is written about me, the title is usually some pun on my last ... I don’t mind it; it’s just not something I ever considered when I picked the name.”