Last week, the woman we know as Emma Stone—you know, the two-time Best Actress Oscar winner—was credited on close friend Taylor Swift’s album credits as “Emily Jean Stone,” a contributor on the song “Florida!!!” from The Tortured Poets Department. If Stone has it her way, we’ll be referring to her by her given name, Emily, more often than not, telling The Hollywood Reporter “that would be so nice.”
Stone took on the stage name of Emma to launch her career, but prefers to use her real name when possible, especially with people she knows personally: “When I get to know them, people that I work with do [call me Emily],” she said. When The Hollywood Reporter asked if she’d correct a fan if they called her Emily, Stone responded, “No. That would be so nice. I would like to be Emily.”
The actress previously told Jimmy Fallon that she wanted to be called Emma growing up because she was a huge fan of Baby Spice—aka Emma Bunton—from the Spice Girls, Entertainment Weekly reports. She also told The Hollywood Reporter that she goes by Emma professionally because Emily Stone was already taken by another actor in SAG-AFTRA. “It’s just because my name was taken,” she said. “Then I freaked out a couple of years ago. For some reason, I was like, ‘I can’t do it anymore. Just call me Emily.’”
Per Entertainment Weekly, “SAG-AFTRA rules stipulate that no member of the guild can have the same professional name as an existing member, which has caused numerous performers to adopt stage names when their birth names are already in use.” Examples? Michael Keaton, who couldn’t use his birth name of Michael Douglas when he joined SAG-AFTRA in the 1970s because another actor was using it, so he adopted a new stage name. Or Diane Keaton, whose birth name is Diane Hall—but there was another Diane Hall already taken, so she took her mother’s maiden name (also, very interesting that both Michael and Diane chose the same surname, unrelated). Elizabeth Banks, born Elizabeth Mitchell, ran into the same problem and had to adopt a stage moniker.
