David Bowie fans just realizing what his real name is and reason why he changed it

Music icon David Bowie might not have become one of the most influential musicians of his era had he not changed his name.

Bowie adopted lots of names throughout his decades-long career, including his famous Ziggy Stardust and the Thin White Duke, but before he even made it onto the scene, he had to come up with a name that wouldn't confuse him with another artist.

He was born David Robert Jones, but changed his name when he was 18 to avoid confusion with another British musician of the same name, Davy Jones, who later became the frontman for The Monkees.

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“In answer to your questions, my real name is David Jones and I don’t have to tell you why I changed it,” the singer wrote to his first American fan in 1967. “‘Nobody’s going to make a monkey out of you’ said my manager.”

Bowie spent “a decade experimenting with various identities” after growing up as “plain old David Jones, a middle-class boy from London’s suburbs,” Time wrote in 2013.

With the intent to shed his old name, the Life on Mars singer finally came up with a new one, inspired by his love for U.S. culture and the 1960 movie The Alamo, author John Lyons wrote in his book, America in the British Imagination: 1945 to the Present.

In 1965, he adopted the name David Bowie in homage to Jim Bowie, the film’s Texan rebel played by Richard Widmark, according to Lyons.

It was a relatively normal practice at the time to take on a stage name, but Bowie took that tradition a step further: David Bowie wasn’t just a pseudonym.

The name change was the beginning of his love of creating an ever-changing persona, rock historian John Covach told Time.

“What started out as a simple name change became a character,” said the 56-year-old director of the Institute for Popular Music at the University of Rochester in New York. “That part was enormously innovative.”

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According to Classic Bands, the icon took his last name from the Bowie knife or "that big old bear killin' knife."

Wherever the name came from, fans are still being shocked by Bowie's real name.

They discussed it on a Reddit board called: "TIL that David Bowie's birth name is David Robert Jones."

One person wrote: "Did not know this. That’s some cool trivia right there."

Another pointed out: "Duncan Jones, director of Moon (2009), Source Code (2011), or Warcraft (2016) is David Bowie's son. He didn't have to change his name to avoid nepotism, like Nicolas Kim Coppola did."

On another Reddit board, another fan penned: "Had to as the Davey Jones from the monkees got famous first."

One joked: "Bowie knife is not pronounced like that. Its pronounced Boowie. So jokes on him."

A third quipped: "Davy Jones, after the locker," as a fourth said: "Just imagine if he had kept Davy Jones and went with a pirate aesthetic."

Yet another laughed: "And he chose to let everyone pronounce it wrong forever."