EXCLUSIVE Why nepo babies are dropping their 'imprisoning' last names
What's in a name? Well, for the children of celebrity parents, a famous last name can open doors to a world of opportunity.
'Nepo', short for 'nepotism,' babies are the offspring of celebrities or influential individuals who've gained career advantages due to their parents' notoriety – whether it's in the entertainment industry, professional sports, business or modeling.
But these nepo babies have received widespread backlash in recent years, with critics pointing out how their privilege has given them opportunities that someone of a lesser socioeconomic status might be more deserving of.
Whether it's to break free from the criticism, or from their own parents entirely, a select few of these celebrity children are dropping their famous last names in an effort to carve out a career for themselves.
Most recently, Malia Obama – the eldest daughter of former US president Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama – dropped her last name when she premiered her short film at Sundance Film Festival in 2024.
The 26-year-old was instead listed as 'Malia Ann' – opting to use her middle name – in the credits of her movie, The Heart, which she made with megastar Donald Glover.
Meanwhile, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt's daughter Shiloh Jolie debuted her new name during a rare public appearance in Los Angeles last week.
The 19-year-old was simply introduced as 'Shi' as she unveiled her choreographed dance routine at an Isabel Marant fashion event.
The name change comes one year after she legally dropped Pitt from her last name - she officially filed the petition on her 18th birthday.
However, this so-called trend of nepo babies ditching their famous surnames isn't new.
When actor Nicholas Cage (born Nicolas Coppola) changed his name early in his career so as not to be as easily associated with his director uncle, Francis Ford Coppola, he was able to fly somewhat under the radar - there was no social media to remind everyone who his relatives are.
Louisa Jacobson, The Gilded Age star and youngest daughter of Oscar winner Meryl Streep and sculptor Don Gummer, goes by her middle name to avoid confusion with another actress named Louisa Gummer.
Even Shiloh's own mother changed her name from Angelina Voight – the last name of her controversy-ridden father, actor Jon Voight – and legally adopted the surname 'Jolie' in 2002.
Undoubtedly, these celebrity children of the past still managed to chart their own successful paths, despite adopting a new moniker.
But according to brand strategist Rachael Kay Albers, when it comes to celebrity children like Malia and Shiloh – whose personal lives have been in the spotlight since their early adolescence – it's far more difficult to shed their former self.
'Nepo babies are changing their names for two main reasons: they want to stand on their own two feet – artistically, career-wise – or they want to live a quiet life and they don't want to be in the limelight,' Albers told the Daily Mail.
'What's unique about Malia and Shiloh is this generational difference,' she explained.
'The coverage surrounding these kids has changed so dramatically, and with the internet and the constant access to celebrity kids, it means when we look back at the celebrity children of Boomers compared to Gen Z or Gen Alpha kids, we're watching it happen in real time.'
Former first lady Michelle Obama recently broke her silence on her eldest daughter's name change, revealing on her Sibling Revelry podcast that her daughters Malia and Sasha started 'pushing away' from her and her husband as teens.
The mother of two said she believes her daughters distanced themselves because they wanted to 'distinguish themselves' from their famous parents.
'They're still doing that, and you guys know this of children with parents who are known,' Obama said.
'It's very important for my kids to feel like they've earned what they are getting in the world.'
Albers agreed that the increasing trend is in an effort to transform their identity away from how they've been perceived by the world their whole lives.
'I think what we're observing here with this new breed of celebrity kids is when they go out there and change their name, it's not because they want to lose the connection to their parents,' she said.
'It's more that we're actively watching this person reshape their identity in public.'
This 'rebrand', as Albers calls it, can be hard when your life is constantly being publicized and dissected by the media. In Shiloh's case, she's sharing the spotlight with her parents' bitter divorce battle.
Exes Jolie and Brad Pitt officially finalized their messy divorce in December 2024, eight years after the actress filed for a dissolution of marriage in September 2016.
Since then, the private details surrounding their split have been made public, including abuse accusations against Pitt stemming from an incident on a private jet, in which all six of their children were present.
Pitt has continued to deny the claims of abuse and was cleared by law enforcement following an investigation.
Pitt remains largely estranged from his children in the wake of the divorce, and Shiloh wasn't the only one to change her name - both Zahara, 20, and Vivienne, 16, have publicly or professionally dropped Pitt's last name.
Pitt and Jolie's daughter Zahara, 20, introduced herself as 'Zahara Jolie' during a sorority event at Spelman College last year
'When we entangle our names with our livelihoods, all is well and good if you build a following and grow a career with that name,' Albers said.
'But if you are transforming, if your family is transforming, suddenly now you're really imprisoned by your name and its associations with your family and all of the press.'
Much like a real-life company rebrand, such as Dunkin' Donuts now going by Dunkin' or the infamous change from Twitter to X, the decision to rebrand yourself isn't always accepted by the general public.
'Any time a brand changes its name and changes its logo or slogan, the brand is betting on the idea that the audience is gonna go along with it. But sometimes there's backlash,' Albers said.
Indeed, the decision to publicly distance yourself from the same family that got you where you are today should be regarded with some courage.
But the real challenge will be whether the masses choose to accept you by this altered identity.
Albers said, after all, 'They'll never forget you're Malia Obama.'
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What is so astonishing about Wilson is how many different groundbreaking things he did simultaneously. In the studio, 'he was inventing a new way of making popular music,' Leaf says. 'What he called modular recording – recording bits and pieces of a song and then piecing it together.' He also pioneered the idea of one person helming all elements of a recorded song: composition, arrangement, performance, mixing, production. On top of that, he did something lyrically radical. He transformed pop into an 'emotional autobiography,' says Leaf. 'He was determined to put his feelings on to the recording tape and share it with the world,' Leaf adds, which was at that time very much not the norm. Many of pop's canonical artists were similar: Dylan didn't just single-handedly make popular music a vessel for poetry, he also infused it with an all new attitude and emotional palette (cynicism, disgust, rebellion), while conflating his previous folk fare with rock to create an entirely new sound. Dylan's decision to go electric has become emblematic of the musical genius's requirement to shock. Even Pet Sounds, an onslaught of loveliness, disturbed the band's record label with its leaps of progress, says Leaf. Pop, sex and violence Nowadays pop music is only really controversial where it overlaps with sex and violence; it is practically impossible to sonically surprise the listening public. The prospect of the end of musical innovation is something students and lovers of guitar music have already had to make peace with – at this point nostalgia is inherent to the genre. 'I'm aware it's impossible to make genuinely new, novel guitar music, and so I tend to lean into anachronism,' is how Owen Williams, frontman of my new favourite old-sounding band, the Tubs, once put it. Just as selling out became a respected career move, explicit derivation is now an artform in itself; in recent years Beyoncé has stayed at the forefront of pop by essentially becoming a kind of musical historian. There is one thing that does feel jarring about the slowed pace of musical progress. Technological advancement has always been woven into sonic novelty – the advent of synths (which Wilson also anticipated), for example, or sampling. Considering technology has accelerated in unimaginable, terrifying ways over the past 20 years, you'd think that might be reflected in the pop zeitgeist. Instead, we have a chart stuffed with tracks that could have essentially been made at any point in the past 50 years. Perhaps the late 20th century – and particularly the 1960s – created a sort of natural selection of music: we found the combinations of notes and rhythms that appealed most to the western human ear and that is what we have continued to rehash. AI to the rescue? Surely, then, this is a problem artificial intelligence may be able to solve. This is technology determined to get to know us more intimately than we know ourselves – what better way to continue the quest for novel pop perfection that Wilson embarked on 60 years ago? In theory, it could supplant human creativity. In actuality, AI is unlikely to wrest control of pop's soul from humans. That's because musical innovation, and even catchy melodies, have ceded importance to the branding of people. If Swift's gargantuan success is anything to go by – which it probably is – pop's future depends on the carefully honed appeal of an individual human personalities, not what they can do on a keyboard (the musical kind). Swift's approach to her public image and the music business in general is groundbreaking in its own way, even if her music isn't. We will be mourning her as a cultural figure at some point, but a musical genius – that would take some real cognitive dissonance. It seems unlikely we will do so with anyone by the end of this century; we have no currently minted visionaries, although time will tell if anyone retroactively earns the title. What is certain is that as the pop canon continues to splinter into thousands of smaller, personal rosters, we will be losing musicians who mean everything to some people, but not – like Wilson – something to almost everyone.
