Priyanka Chopra Explains Why She Changed Her Name After Marrying Nick Jonas

On Tuesday (February 9), Priyanka Chopra's memoir Unfinished hit store shelves. While promoting her book, the 38-year-old actress explained why she decided to change her last name after marrying Nick Jonas in 2018, as well as what it was like to see her new name—Priyanka Chopra Jonas—on the cover of her memoir.

"The first time I saw it, the first time I saw it, I was like, ‘oh, oh ok, that’s my name now,’” Chopra said in a recent interview. She did, however, point out that she “never changed my name," but rather "added his into mine.”

Deciding whether or not to change your name after getting married is a personal decision. Chopra spoke about her desire to honor family traditions, as well as maintain her own identity. "I wanted to sort of honor traditions, but at the same time, I didn’t want to let go of my identity, you know, and this was my in-between, I guess," she said of adding Jonas to her last name. "I inherited a beautiful name and I hope to live up to its legacy...it’s just I think it was one of those things that you’ve grown up with, and a part of me hopes that we are a world 50 years later where, you know, the conversation is different, where girls don’t think about being raised or think about that. I was never forced into it, it’s just something I wanted to do because that’s how I grew up.”

“And we have to like maybe hopefully in another 50 years, it’ll be guys taking our names too, or just not changing our names, you know, and that’ll be normalized," she continued. "But I don’t think I was at that place when I got married, I kind of wanted to honor my parents’ tradition and that’s just how it happened. But I definitely – my identity has been mine for so many years that there was no way that my last name would have been lost.”

Unfinished is available for purchase now.

Photo: Getty