Tina Knowles opened up about her upbringing in Galveston, Texas on the most recent episode of ‘In My Head With Heather Thomson’, and revels the actual inspiration behind Beyonce’s name!
Mama Tina says that ‘Beyonce; is actually her maiden name, and many of her family members still hold the last name with different spellings.
“A lot of people don’t know that Beyoncé is actually my maiden name,” she said. “My name was Celestine Beyoncé, which at that time, it was not a cool thing to have that weird name. I wanted my name to be Linda Smith because those were the cool names.”
Tina reflects on the times of living in poverty, and experiencing extreme forms of racism, and how that contributed to her family having variations of the last name.
“And it’s interesting and it shows you the times because we asked my other when I was grown I was like why is my brother’s name spelled B-E-Y-I-N-C-E? And you know it’s all different spellings. And my mom’s reply to me was ‘that’s what they put on your birth certificate.”
“So I said, ‘Well, why didn’t you argue and make them correct it?” she continued. “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.”
Tina divorced Mathew Knowles and remarried to Richard Lawson in 2015, which is why she abandoned her last name in the first place. She does, however, always have a piece of it with her through her amazing daughter Beyoncé Knowles.
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