10 Celebrities Who Invented Grammatically Frustrating Names

These celebrities all made up really grammatically frustrating stage names, and we’re about to drop the truth on them.

1. Jay Z

Via Flickr: nrk-p3

Jay Z recently dropped his old hyphen (and it’s looking for work elsewhere). Unless Jay-Z is a compound modifier (of what, Beyoncé?), that was a good move. Speaking of hyphens – does Ice-T’s make sense? We don’t think so.

2. Lil' Bow Wow and all the other Lil's

Via Flickr: 85509292@N00

Whoever the first Lil’ was, they messed it up for everyone. If you follow the rules of apostrophes, Lil’ Bow Wow, Lil’ Kim and the rest of the giant Lil’ family should actually spell it Li’l’ due to the location of the omitted letters. But that looks weird, so ... ugh, we’re just going to have to deal. (They’ll eventually drop the lil’ anyway.)

3. Ke$ha

Via Flickr: kidpaparazzi

Nope. Just... nope. You can’t put a money sign in your name, even if it does look like an S. Does everybody else feel the need to do a cash-drawer sound in the middle of her name? Keh-chaching-HA? Yeah, let’s call her that weird sound until she changes it.

4. P!nk

Via Flickr: 37340831@N07

She goes by Pink but writes it as P!nk. End punctuation should identify the end of a part of text, which isn’t really happening here. Since there is no universally-agreed-upon sound for an exclamation mark, we imagine it sounding like someone trying to say the word “pink” while being punched in the stomach.

5. will.i.am

Via Flickr: 58820009@N05

Proper nouns (like names) should be capitalized. Even still, will.i.am has done cool things with his name. His real name is William and he managed to break down that into a “sentence” that still makes sense (with questionable syntax, but still)!

6. Snoop Dogg

Via Flickr: nrk-p3

Snoop, you weren’t even challenging us. Dog is misspelled, obviously. Though we must admit that “I’m the motherf***ing dee-oh-double-gee” sounds way better than “I’m the motherf***ing dee-oh-single-gee.” In any case, that’s all water under the bridge since he’s Snoop Lion now.

7. Ringo Starr

Via Flickr: 23588458@N00

Darling Ringo, we dig your name. We really do. But we don’t get why you had to add the second “R” to your last name. Richard Starkey (your birth name) doesn’t have two R’s. You had a golden opportunity there – not many rock stars can shorten their name to “Star.” Oh, well.

8. 2pac

Via Flickr: 36522892@N05

According to the rules of inserting numbers into text, “numbers of one or two words should be spelled out with letters.” So 2pac is just, no.

9. Axl Rose

Via Flickr: 28671265@N06

Axl changed his name to this because his old band was called AXL, but we really really just want to sneak another vowel in there to make it more pronounceable/a real word.

10. P. Diddy

Via Flickr: 23376889@N07

Okay, so P. Diddy and Puff Daddy and Sean Diddy Combs and Swag are all the same person?! If that P. is short for Puff, it should be followed by Daddy and not Diddy. And if that P. stands for Sean, it should be... not a P. So confusing, Swag!