Earlier this week we highlighted some country artists who ditched their given name and go by a stage name instead.<\/p>\n
Today we bring you part two.<\/p>\n
Here are ten more country artists, and their REAL names:<\/p>\n
1. LeAnn Rimes’ real first name is Margaret. LeAnn is her middle name.<\/p>\n
2. Tim McGraw was raised as Samuel Timothy Smith until the age of 11. That’s when he found out who his real father was. MLB pitcher, Tug McGraw.<\/p>\n
3. Toby Keith’s full name is actually Toby Keith Covel.<\/p>\n
4. Cody Jinks’ full name is Meredith Cody Jinks.<\/p>\n
5. Kid Rock’s name is Robert James Richie.<\/p>\n
6. Thomas Rhett’s real name is Thomas Rhett Akins . . . but he wanted to steer clear of any confusion with his famous father, Rhett Akins.<\/p>\n
7. Koe Wetzel’s full name is Ropyr Madison Koe Wetzel. (Why would you not go by Ropyr?)<\/p>\n
8. Oliver Anthony’s real name is Christopher Anthony Lunsford.<\/p>\n
9. Wynonna Judd’s real name is Christina Claire Ciminella. She got Wynonna from the song “Route 66” . . . and took her mother’s maiden name, because Ciminella sounded too much like salmonella.<\/p>\n
10. And Jelly Roll’s real name is Jason DeFord.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Earlier this week we highlighted some country artists who ditched their given name and go by a stage name instead.\u00a0","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":30456,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"featured_img_display":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3337],"tags":[9651,6818,4214,9053,4630,8147,32,3521,4179],"class_list":["post-32236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-country-music-news","tag-cody-jinks","tag-jelly-roll","tag-kid-rock","tag-koe-wetzel","tag-leann-rimes","tag-oliver-anthony","tag-thomas-rhett","tag-tim-mcgraw","tag-toby-keith"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-10 21:02:21","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"react_link":"https:\/\/chok.com\/blogs\/country-music-news\/2025\/05\/the-real-names-of-some-country-stars-part-two\/","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/briwebapp.net\/chokfm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/briwebapp.net\/chokfm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/briwebapp.net\/chokfm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briwebapp.net\/chokfm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briwebapp.net\/chokfm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/briwebapp.net\/chokfm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32236\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briwebapp.net\/chokfm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30456"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/briwebapp.net\/chokfm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briwebapp.net\/chokfm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/briwebapp.net\/chokfm\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}