Los Angeles Lakers veteran forward Carmelo Anthony had issues when he was a kid with other kids ‘butchering’ his name. It got to the point where Melo wanted to change his name to something more known.
“I’m in 3rd grade. I’m coming from New York,” Anthony said on Armchair Expert with Dax Shepard, per R. P. Salao of ClutchPoints. Nobody knows who the hell I am [in Baltimore]. I come the summer of ’92. School starts in September. So I have two months to meet some people, hang out. Mind you, I’m 8 or 9 years old at this point. When I get to 3rd grade, first day of school you gotta write your name on a white index card.
“That whole summer, people was butchering my name. It was just like ‘Caramelo’ and ‘Camelo’. “There wasn’t no nothing bad to it. I just didn’t like people f–ing my name up. … So I write the name ‘Tyrone’ and I’m looking around and I’m like ‘what last name am I gonna go with?’ So I see a textbook and it’s like ‘Johnson’ and something textbook. So I’m like, ‘Tyrone Johnson’.”
Since then Carmelo became a household name in the NBA and the world of sports in general thanks to success on the court.
