Keira Knightley Reveals Her Name Was Spelt Incorrectly From Birth: “That’s Me. A Spelling Error.”

Some names can be hard to spell, but you would’ve thought that Keira’s own parents would make sure her name was spelt correctly on her birth certificate.

The actress has revealed that her name was supposed to be ‘Kiera’, but a mix-up on the birth certificate left her ‘Keira’.

The Oscar-nominated star, who’s currently around five months pregnant, says her mum, playwright Sharman Macdonald, spelled her name incorrectly when registering her birth. Oops.

“I was meant to be named ‘Kiera’ after a Russian ice skater who was on the TV one day,” the 29-year-old star told Elle UK magazine.

“My dad fancied her and nicked her name for me. But it was my mum who went to register my birth, and she accidentally spelled ‘ei’ instead of ‘ie’ because my mum’s crap at spelling.”

And Keira’s dad wasn’t best happy about the blunder. “Apparently, when she came back he said: ‘What the f**k? You’ve spelt her name wrong!’” says Keira.

“What were they going to do, though? Once it’s on the piece of paper, it’s on the piece of paper. And that’s me. A spelling error.”

Sharmam is by no means the first – or the last parent – to botch up her child’s birth certificate and luckily you do have a chance to patch up your mistake.

You can apply for a birth registration correction and have 12 months to make your changes.

There are lots of baby names that are difficult to spell – or tend to be spelt phonetically. And Cate Blanchett, Dannii Minogue, Emilie Sande and Seann William Scott are just four celebs who seem like their names are wrongly spelt.

Last year, boxer Amir Khan made two alterations to his daughter’s name in the first week of her life. The Olympic medalist first gave his baby the name Lamysa, before changing it to Lamysah.

The new dad then changed his daughter’s name for a third time to Lamaisah – reportedly to make pronouncing it a little easier.

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Do you know someone who’s changed their baby’s name? Let us know in the comments.