While most fans know Bob Dylan by his iconic stage name, many are surprised to learn he wasn’t born with it. The name the world now associates with one of America’s most influential folk singers was one he created early in his career, officially adopting it in 1962.
Just two years after he began performing, Dylan took steps to legally change his name, so seriously, in fact, that he refused to discuss his given name at the time. Speaking with Newsweek, he acknowledged that he was born in Duluth and raised in Hibbing, Minnesota, but he dodged any questions about the identity he was leaving behind.
“Dig my draft card, man,” he said at the time. “Bob Dylan.”
In reality, the future legend was born on May 24, 1941, as Robert Allen Zimmerman. That leads to the question fans have asked for decades, where did “Bob Dylan” come from?
Bob is a natural shortening of Robert, but the origin of “Dylan” has been a point of fascination, and confusion, for years.
A popular belief is that he adopted the surname in honor of Welsh poet Dylan Thomas. But Dylan pushed back on that theory as early as 1961.
As noted by the Grammy Awards, he told The New York Times that he had no admiration for Thomas, saying, “Straighten out in your book that I did not take my name from Dylan Thomas. Dylan Thomas’ poetry is for people that aren’t really satisfied in their bed – for people who dig masculine romance.”
Even so, the connection between the two men isn’t entirely imagined. In his 2004 autobiography, Chronicles: Volume One, Dylan explained that he once considered performing under the name Robert Allen, later adjusting it to Allyn because it felt “more exotic, more inscrutable.”
Around that time, he saw poems by Thomas. The name Dylan, he wrote, felt similar to Allyn but had more punch, thanks in part to what he called the strength of the letter “D.”
For more than sixty years, fans speculated about why Bob Dylan left behind the Zimmerman name. Many believed he wanted to step into a new persona and escape the expectations of his past. Others assumed he was seeking anonymity.
But in an unreleased TV interview, its transcript resurfaced in 2020, Dylan offered the clearest explanation yet. Speaking with his longtime friend Tony Glover, he shared two defining reasons.
First, he needed a character that audiences could believe in, someone larger or more symbolic than his everyday self. “It was more or less that there had to be this character…There had to be something about it, to carry it to that extra dimension,” he said, according to Come Writers and Critics.
The second reason was tied to his early experiences with anti-Semitism. “My first 18 years I encountered [prejudice], sure…A lot of people are under the impression that Jews are just money lenders and merchants. A lot of people think that all Jews are like that. Well, they used to be cause that’s all that was open to them. That’s all they were allowed to do…In a way, [the name change] allowed me to step into the Guthrie role with more character. And, I wouldn’t have to kept being reminded of things I didn’t want to be reminded of at that time.”
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