Originally appeared on E! Online.
This revelation may make you go, "Whoa!"
Joey Lawrence is not Joey Lawrence's real name. The actor, best known for roles on '90s sitcoms "Blossom" and "Brotherly Love," spoke out about how he has been using his middle name as a last name throughout his career, while his brothers, Matthew Lawrence and Andrew Lawrence, have followed suit.
Joey was born Joseph Lawrence Mignogna III. He was named after the siblings' dad and paternal grandfather. Speaking at a panel at 90s Con at the Connecticut Convention Center in Hartford, Connecticut, on March 28, the 48-year old noted that in the '80s, when he began acting, he was told, "No one can pronounce Mignogna. That's not a name people will say."
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"Today, things like that are celebrated," he added, per Parade. "But in the '80s, it was like, 'We need to water this down.' The silent Gs ...They were like, ‘We need to go with something a little more bland.' So they’re like, ‘Let's call him Joey Lawrence,’ and then that’s just what we did. It just made sense."
Matthew, who adopted Lawrence for his stage name as a child star in the '80s, said he's "just stuck with two different names" now. The "Mrs. Doubtfire" star added that he "can’t travel internationally without a huge hassle."
The 45-year-old said he would have preferred to keep his original last name. "Even for a while there, the government only recognized me as Matt Lawrence because I paid taxes from the time I was a toddler to 18 as Matt Lawrence," he said, "but really, my name is Matthew William Mignogna."
The brothers' real last name, they added, is pronounced similarly to, "Filet mignon."
This is not the first time Joey, Matthew and Andrew, 37, have discussed the history of their last name change.
"I won a picture contest. Went to an agency in New York," the "Melissa & Joey" alum said on a 2023 episode of the siblings' podcast "Brotherly Love." "They looked at my last name and they're like, 'This is not gonna work. No one's gonna hire a kid with his goofy last name. We can't even pronounce it. What's his middle name?'"
