Why did Michelle Yeoh change her name from Michelle Khan?
YTSL sent in this info: Here’s the story that I’ve managed to piece together from several sources (including people who know Michelle, e.g., were school-mates of hers or are friends of her parents): Michelle Yeoh is a Malaysian national who is an ethnic Hokkien Chinese. Yeoh Choo Kheng is her Hokkien name, which gets transl(iter)ated into Cantonese as Yeung Chi King. Michelle is not a name that she was born with or used as a child but, instead, seems to have been one that she either picked up as a teenager or upon going and starting a career in Hong Kong. In any case, for some reason, she got credited as Michelle Kheng — with it seeming to have been incorrectly assumed that her last name was also her surname — in such as the Hong Kong release of “Yes Madam!”. I get the feeling that it was from this that the European distributors of her (early) films decided to go for the more easily remembered “Michelle Khan”. As to how she went back to being Michelle Yeoh: Michelle has told the stor
