10 Things We Learned From Renee Young On Talk Is Jericho

7. Choosing A Name

Jericho inquires about the process of naming her, and she says that her real name is Renee Paquette. Originally her first name was Renee Sterling, and she "kind of freaked out" because she had no idea her name would be changed and didn't realize that was part of the deal. She said she was in the process of packing up her apartment right before she came down to do the Stones gig and she got an email addressed to Renee Sterling, and she had no idea who that was.

"I kind of had a bit of a meltdown because I didn't like it at all. I didn't like the name change and I especially didn't like the name 'Renee Sterling', I sounded like some weird sexy secretary. So I gave them a bunch of different names to choose from and luckily they were lenient in that, so I did 'Renee Young' from Neil Young. I was kind of going through all of my records at home being like 'Who's someone that I could steal their name?' I was going to do 'Rogers' which is Prince's real last name. I gave them 'Rustin' which is Audrey Hepburn's real last name. They didn't want the double R though. I gave them 'Ryan', which is a family name, which 'Renee Ryan' I was actually super into. But they didn't want any of those, they went with 'Young'. Neil Young, he's a Canadian, it works."

Renee says she still has a really hard time signing 'Young' so she usually just signs things with her first name. Jericho asks if they wanted her to change her name because it was too ethnic, but she says she thinks it's just policy for everyone. She said after she cried about it, she just dealt with it and didn't look into it any further.