Tina Knowles Reveals Where She Got Beyoncé’s Name

Beyoncé's mother, Tina Knowles, revealed how she came up with her daughter's iconic name.

In a recent guest appearance on Vogue's "The Run Through" podcast, the 70-year-old celebrity mom revealed, "Beyoncé is my last name, my maiden name. When I was gonna have a baby -- we have very few boys -- I was like, 'Oh, god, this name is gonna become extinct.' And the thing about it is, when I was a little kid, my name was Celestine Beyoncé."

Tina said she was afraid that her maiden name Beyoncé would become extinct, so she named her and her ex-husband Mathew Knowles' eldest daughter Beyoncé Giselle.

@voguemagazine Beyonce and #Solange are iconic names-- but how did Ms. #TinaKnowles arrive at them? Here, the matriarch of the Knowles family explains the story of how--and why-- her maiden name became #Beyonce's first name. For the rest of the interview, listen to the most recent episode of #Vogue's #TheRunThrough ♬ original sound - Vogue

She also shared how she wanted her name to be "Linda Smith, Judy Green, and other really cute little names" when she was a kid. But as she grew older, her name, Célestine Ann Beyoncé, "started growing on [her]," especially when people said that she had a "pretty name."

"And the interesting [thing] is that if you look at the spellings, our names started off as B-O-Y-A-N-C-é, so it is Boyancé. And it got Americanized when my parents got to Texas because my mom said she wanted it to rhyme with fiancé so that people could say it 'cause they were calling them all kinda crazy things," she continued.

"And then when she had kids, our birth certificates, all of us have different spellings. Me and my brother we're the only B-E-Y-O-N-C-é and then my other brothers are B-E-Y-I-N-C-é. So, for me to claim it is really good."

Interestingly, the name Beyincé was featured on the 42-year-old vocalist's latest album, "Cowboy Carter." In one of the promotional photos for the album, Beyoncé posted a snap of her wearing only a sash that read, "act ii BEYINCé."

While some people thought at the time that it was a spelling error, it wasn't. The "Texas Hold 'Em" artist intentionally used that spelling to refer to the spelling errors that happened with her mother's and family members' birth certificates, according to Today.

"(I) asked my mother when I was grown. I was like, 'Why is my brother's name spelled B-E-Y-I-N-C-E? You know, it's all these different spellings.' And my mom's reply to me was like, 'That's what they put on your birth certificate,'" Tina revealed in a 2020 interview on the "In My Head With Heather Thomson" podcast.

"So I said, 'Well, why didn't you argue and make them correct it?' And she said, 'I did one time. The first time, and I was told, 'Be happy that you're getting a birth certificate' because, at one time, Black people didn't get birth certificates."

Tags

Beyonce, Cowboy carter, TIna Knowles