Prince was his birth name. Born to two musical parents on June 7, 1958, his father, John Nelson played under the stage name Prince Rogers in a group called The Prince Rogers Trio.
When he had a son with the trio’s singer Mattie Della Shaw (he already had children with Vivian Nelson), he decided to give the baby his stage name, so the boy became Prince Rogers Nelson.
His father later explained: "I named my son Prince because I wanted him to do everything I wanted to do." From the very beginning he went by the singular Prince as a stage name.
While most people know about the singer’s infamous name change, here are 10 things you might not have known about Prince, shared by Mental Floss.
Trending Now: Prince is believed not to have left a will when he died at age 57 of opioid toxicity. That means a Minnesota judge has some hard decisions to make as several relatives and at least one federal prison inmate battle it out over who's his rightful heir. Get more scoop on NBCNews.com