Why Tammy Wynette Changed Her Name From Virginia to Tammy
Country singer Tammy Wynette was born in 1942 and died in 1998. At birth, she was given the name Virginia Wynette Pugh. When the singer moved to Nashville, Tennessee to start a music career, she became known professionally as Tammy Wynette.
Tammy Wynette was given a different name at birth
Wynette was born in Mississippi in May 1942. When she was around nine months old, her father died from a brain tumor. Following her father’s death, Wynette’s mother moved from Mississippi to Tennessee and left Wynette to live with her grandparents.
Wynette lived with her grandparents on the family farm, and she came to refer to her grandparents as her parents.
According to Country Living, “At age 7, she began working long days picking cotton with her family, a lesson in hard work she never forgot. Even after Wynette found fame as a singer, she kept a crystal bowl full of cotton in her home to remind herself of those days in the cotton field.”
The singer changed her name to Tammy Wynette
Before she became a singer, Wynette worked different jobs including as a waitress and hairstylist. While working as a hairdresser, Wynette appeared on The Porter Wagoner Show which gave her some name recognition in music.
In 1966, Wynette moved to Nashville with her three daughters, leaving her first husband Euple Byrd. She went on to sign a deal with Epic Records.
Signing this record deal with Epic Records is what led to Wynette changing her name.
According to Wide Open Country, “Epic Records told her she might want to consider changing her name to be more recognizable. Producer Billy Sherrill said that she looked like Debbie Reynolds in the film Tammy and the Bachelor, so they decided to change her name to Tammy.”
With this new stage name, Wynette began releasing music under the name Tammy Wynette.
The singer’s real name was sometimes used by her band
During Wynette’s career, she began experiencing health issues which led to a dependence on painkillers. It is widely speculated that Wynette’s fifth husband George Richey enabled this dependency based on claims made by Wynette’s daughter Georgette Jones.
According to The Boot, Jones wrote in her 2011 memoir The Three of Us: Growing Up With Tammy and George that Richey tampered with Wynette’s medication use.
“There are some people who witnessed mom saying she didn’t want any pain medication, to not give her anymore and Richey would continue to inject her anyway,” Jones wrote in the memoir according to the Boot. “There were times when she did want it because she was in pain and he refused to give it to her.”
Whenever Wynette showed up to performances and rehearsals impaired, her band used her birth name as a code name.
According to Jimmy McDonough’s 2010 biography Tammy Wynette: Tragic Country Queen, “The band even had a saying to clue one another in that Tammy was seriously under the influence: ‘Virginia’s in the house.’ Virginia Pugh was Tammy’s real name, and when Virginia’s name was invoked, it indicated an overmedicated Wynette.”
