Whoopi Goldberg Shares How Her Stage Name Came to Be: ‘I Was Whoopi Cushione’

Whoopi Goldberg‘s stage name has quite the back story. The 68-year-old performer, whose birth name is Caryn Elaine Johnson, says she initially planned to go by the name “Whoopi Cushione” in the early days of her career. 

The moniker, of course, serves as a reference to the iconic “Whoopee Cushion” toy, but is said with a French accent. 

“My mother said, ‘Are you crazy?'” Goldberg revealed during a recent interview on Late Night With Seth Meyers. 

“She said, ‘You are diminishing your abilities and if you call yourself by ‘Whoopee Cushion’ people are not going to … appreciate what you can do,” she continued. “And I said, ‘Oh, really, oh great namer of the stars?'” 

The actress said she conceded and asked for her mother’s input on the matter, landing on a name with more personal value. 

“She said, ‘Well there’s a lot of family names, we got a lot of different people in our families, I like Goldberg,'” the Sister Act star recalled. “I said, ‘OK, we’ll try it.'” 

The name stuck and Goldberg ended up telling her mother, Emma Harris, “You were right, I was wrong.”

The EGOT winner recounts this story and many others in her memoir, Bits and Pieces: My Mother, My Brother, and Me, which was released in May. 

“Once I started getting parts in plays, I wanted a name that sounded more interesting. Caryn Johnson wasn’t it,” she wrote, according to an excerpt published by Us Weekly. 

“Whoopi” originated as a nickname from her colleagues, she wrote, because she “would sometimes let loose with a fart.” 

The book was written in honor of her late mother, who died in 2010 from a stroke, and her brother, Clyde, who died five years later from a brain aneurysm.

While promoting the book’s release, Goldberg told ET that now seemed like the perfect time to give her family the spotlight, given she was running up against time herself.

“I didn’t know if now was the right time to tell the story. It was just what I decided I needed to do. It wasn’t like a big revelation, and I think it’s just because I was starting to forget some stuff, you know?” Goldberg said. “The book isn’t really about me. It’s about the trio of people, and so I wanted to hold on as long as I could and kept writing stuff and this came out.” 

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