Bollywood celebrities have changed their names for various reasons. Numerology, superstition and sometimes just for a better name, celebrities have changed a letter or more in their names. Let us look at a few.

Katrina Kaif

Kat’s surname was Turquotte. After Jackie Shroff’s wife advised Katrina to change her surname in the early days of her career, the long legged beauty did as suggested. The logic behind the change was to let people pronounce her full name without any difficulty.

Mallika Sherawat

This hottie’s real name is Reema Lamba. But after realizing that there were many actresses in the industry with the same name, she decided to change it to Mallika Sherawat to avoid confusion. Sherawat, however, was her mother’s maiden name.

Amitabh Bachchan

Bachchan, also known as Big B has a cult like fan following in India. However, just a few know that in his debut film titled ‘Saat Hindustani’, Amitabh was actually Amitabh Srivastav before he switched to Amitabh Bachchan soon after the film’s disastrous fate.

Akshay Kumar

Rajiv Hari Om Bhatia! We wonder if he would make it big with that name. Akshay Kumar, who was a struggling chef, entered the film industry only after changing his name.

Ajay Devgn

Action choreographer Veeru Devgan named his son Vishal Veeru Devgan. But just before Vishal was to enter filmdom, he got himself a new identity – Ajay. And in 2009, he dropped ‘a’ from his last name.

John Abraham

John’s Parsi name ‘Farhan’ wasn’t interesting enough for him to grab attention. So he chose the name given to him by his father.

Rekha

Rekha, such a nice, small and sweet name. Compare this with Bhanurekha Ganesan. We’re glad she decided to give her name a change!