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Oprah Winfrey is once more correcting the record when it comes to her real name, as the lore is passed down to the new generation.
Oprah has to be one of the most recognisable names in the world, with her eponymous talk show, which ran from 1986 to 2011, hosting the most high-profile figures of the time.
But while the spotlight is normally on whoever the powerhouse personality is interviewing, every now and then heads turn to the woman of the hour herself to uncover the real person beneath the dazzling star power.
That’s the case in the latest episode of Baby, This Is Keke Palmer hosted by the titular actress, who sat down with the 72-year-old media titan to discuss the trials, tribulations and triumphs she’s faced throughout her life.
Straight out the gate, however, she addresses a little-known fact about Oprah’s true name, which occasionally resurfaces to surprise a whole new set of fans.
‘I found out that your name, it was originally Orpah,’ Keke said. For those who haven’t caught it, the r and p are switched, pronouncing it Or-pah.
It’s a subtle swap, but it has made a world of difference for Oprah over the past five decades and more.
Her birth certificate spells her name as Orpah, as it is named after a biblical figure in the Book of Ruth.
As Oprah told Keke: ‘It’s that whole Ruth and Naomi story. Ruth said: “Wherever thy goest, I will go.” And then Orpah said: “I’m going back. I’m sorry. I can’t. Too long. The road’s too long.”‘
‘Now, what made you go to Oprah?’ Keke pressed, asking all the right questions.
As the talkshow persona explained: ‘It’s not what made me, I was a kid.
‘Nobody knew how to spell it. So it turned out on my birth certificate, it’s Orpah but then people started calling me Oprah. It’s just the difference of the ‘p’ being before the ‘r’ or after the ‘r’.
‘Once they started with Oprah, that’s it.’
In fact, it was such a seamless transition that Oprah herself didn’t even discover what she was called on her birth certificate until she was around 20 years old, at which point she had accepted her rearranged name.
The pair then bonded over navigating the world with different names, since Keke herself is legally called Lauren Keyana Palmer. So there you have it, two name facts for the price of one.
This is far from the first time this nugget about Oprah’s real name has emerged.
In fact, in an interview with the Academy of Achievement in 1991, she recalled a similar tale, sharing that she was born in her home in rural Mississippi and there were ‘not a lot of educated people around’
She continued: ‘My Aunt Ida had chosen the name, but nobody really knew how to spell it, so it went down as “Orpah” on my birth certificate, but people didn’t know how to pronounce it, so they put the “P” before the “R” in every place else other than the birth certificate.
‘On the birth certificate it is Orpah, but then it got translated to Oprah, so here we are. But that’s great because Oprah spells Harpo backwards. I don’t know what Orpah spells.’