Marilyn Monroe's Many Names: From Norma Jeane to the Icon

Born Norma Jeane Mortenson on June 1, 1926, in Los Angeles, Marilyn Monroe changed her name multiple times before becoming a global icon. Her mother Gladys Pearl Baker named her after actresses Norma Talmadge and Jean Harlow, but the surname Mortenson was a misspelling of her second husband Martin Edward Mortensen. Biographers Fred Guiles and Lois Banner suggest her biological father was Charles Stanley Gifford, a supervisor at RKO Studios. At 16, she married James Dougherty to avoid foster care, taking his surname. As a pin-up model, agent Emmeline Snively introduced her as Jean Norman. The stage name Marilyn Monroe was devised by 20th Century Fox talent scout Ben Lyon, who thought Dougherty was too hard to pronounce. Monroe proposed her grandmother's maiden name Monroe; Lyon chose Marilyn after Broadway star Marilyn Miller. She briefly used Norma Jeane DiMaggio during her marriage to Joe DiMaggio (Jan–Oct 1954). On February 23, 1956, she legally changed her name to Marilyn Monroe. Her final marriage to Arthur Miller ended in divorce in 1961, a year before her death.