First Names
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50 free First Names trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
A first name feels like the most ordinary fact about a person, which is exactly why the surprises land. Plenty of household names are not the names on the birth certificate: stars, presidents and royals have swapped, shortened or simply buried the one they were given. This quiz covers first names from every angle. You will be asked for the real names behind famous nicknames and stage names, the first names of fictional characters who are usually known only by a surname or a title, and the stories behind names borrowed from cities, songs, saints and relatives. A few questions look at how names worked in other times and places. It is written for pub quiz regulars, hosts building a names round, and anyone who enjoys finding out what a famous person is really called. Every answer comes with a short explanation.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What is the real first name of Shaggy, the always-hungry best friend of the Great Dane Scooby-Doo?
Norville
Norville Rogers is the name Shaggy hides behind his nickname. Casey Kasem voiced him for 28 years and persuaded the producers to make the character a vegetarian.
Q 02Sir Paul McCartney goes by his middle name; which first name, shared with his father, was he given at birth?
James
James Paul McCartney was born in Liverpool in 1942. His father, a jazz player, was a James too and went by Jim.
Q 03Oprah Winfrey's first name was meant to be Orpah, a woman from which book of the Bible?
Ruth
Ruth is the book in which Orpah appears, as the heroine's sister-in-law. The spelling on Winfrey's birth certificate was mispronounced so often that Oprah stuck.
Q 04Which Italian city, her birthplace in 1820, gave the nurse known as the Lady with the Lamp her first name?
Florence
Florence was where the Nightingales were touring when she was born. Her older sister Parthenope was named the same way, after the Greek settlement on the site of Naples.
Q 05What is the first name of Kramer, Jerry's eccentric neighbor in Seinfeld, kept secret until the sixth season?
Cosmo
Cosmo slipped out in the episode The Switch, when Kramer's estranged mother Babs said it aloud. An early script that was never filmed would have named him Conrad.
Q 06What is the real first name of Wendy Thomas, whose childhood nickname her father Dave gave to his burger chain?
Melinda
Melinda Lou Thomas became Wendy because her siblings could not pronounce her name and called her Wenda, which is how a fourth child ended up on the restaurant sign.
Q 07What is the actual first name of Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex, as given at his 1984 christening?
Henry
Henry is the name the prince was christened with at Windsor Castle. Harry began as the Middle English form of that name and only later became a pet name.
Q 08What is the first name of Mr Darcy, the proud hero who marries Elizabeth Bennet in Pride and Prejudice?
Fitzwilliam
Fitzwilliam was his mother's maiden name: Lady Anne Darcy was born a Fitzwilliam, which is also why his cousin, an earl's younger son, is Colonel Fitzwilliam.
Q 09Which two-time heavyweight boxing champion gave all five of his sons his own first name?
George Foreman
George Foreman said he gave every son his own name so that they would always have something in common. Nicknames such as Monk, Big Wheel and Red tell them apart.
Q 10What is the first name of Cap'n Crunch, the cereal mascot who captains a ship called the Guppy?
Horatio
Horatio Magellan Crunch is the mascot's full name. He has often been drawn with one, two or three sleeve bars rather than the four an American naval captain wears.
Q 11Which first name does the J stand for in J. K. Rowling, the pen name on the Harry Potter books?
Joanne
Joanne Rowling has no middle name at all. Her publisher wanted initials so that boys would not shy from a woman's book, and she borrowed the K from her grandmother Kathleen.
Q 12What is the real first name of Lady Gaga, the singer born in Manhattan with the surname Germanotta?
Stefani
Stefani Germanotta performs under a stage name derived from the Queen song Radio Ga Ga, a hit released in 1984, two years before she was born.
Q 13What is the real first name of golfer Tiger Woods, whose nickname honors a soldier friend of his father?
Eldrick
Eldrick was his mother's invention: it starts with E for his father, Earl, and ends with K for her own name, Kultida.
Q 21Which first name was Queen Victoria baptised with, in honor of her godfather, the Tsar of Russia?
Alexandrina
Alexandrina appeared on the documents drawn up on the first day of her reign, but the new queen had the name withdrawn at her own wish and never used it again.
Q 22Which first name did the stammering British monarch portrayed in The King's Speech use before taking the throne in 1936?
Albert
Albert, or Bertie to his family, was named after Queen Victoria's late husband. On becoming king he chose to reign under the last of his four given names instead.
Q 23Which first name was Civil War general and US president Ulysses S. Grant actually given at birth?
Hiram
Hiram Ulysses Grant lost his first name when the congressman who nominated him to West Point altered it. His new initials, U.S., got him nicknamed Sam, for Uncle Sam.
Q 14Which first name was the Brazilian footballer Pelé given at birth in 1940 and called by his family?
Edson
Edson Arantes do Nascimento was named after the American inventor Edison, and at home his family called him Edson or Dico rather than Pelé.
Q 15What was the given first name of Gandhi, the Indian independence leader better known by the honorific Mahatma?
Mohandas
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi became known as Mahatma, a Sanskrit honorific meaning great-souled. Many Indians knew him simply as Bapu, an endearment meaning father.
Q 16What is the legal first name of Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, the same as her character's in the drama Suits?
Rachel
Rachel Meghan Markle goes by her middle name, yet she spent seven seasons of the legal drama playing a character called Rachel Zane.
Q 17What was the real first name of Mark Twain, the pen name of a former Mississippi riverboat pilot?
Samuel
Samuel Langhorne Clemens took Mark Twain from the leadsman's cry for two fathoms of water, the depth that was safe for a steamboat.
Q 18What is the real first name of Sting, the Police frontman nicknamed for a wasp-like striped sweater?
Gordon
Gordon Sumner got the nickname in a jazz band, when the bandleader said his habitual black-and-yellow striped jumper made him look like a wasp.
Q 19What was the original first name of astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the second person to walk on the Moon?
Edwin
Edwin Aldrin became Buzz because a sister mispronounced brother as buzzer. He made the nickname his legal first name in 1988.
Q 20Which Michigan-born pop star's stage name is a real first name, inherited from a mother who was an X-ray technician?
Madonna
Madonna Louise Ciccone was named after her mother, so relatives called the future star Little Nonnie. She added Veronica as a confirmation name in 1966.
Q 24Which first name was future US president Gerald Ford given at birth, before he took his stepfather's name?
Leslie
Leslie Lynch King Jr. was born in Omaha in 1913. After his mother remarried he was called Gerald Ford Jr., though the change was not made formal until 1935.
Q 25The author of The Great Gatsby was named after which distant cousin, who wrote the words of the US national anthem?
Francis Scott Key
Francis Scott Key wrote the anthem's words in 1814, and the novelist was christened Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald. He signed his books with only the initial F.
Q 26Which first name was Western film star John Wayne given at birth in Iowa in 1907?
Marion
Marion Morrison preferred to be called Duke, a nickname he picked up as a boy because he went everywhere with his Airedale Terrier of that name.
Q 27What first name was Sir Elton John given at birth in Pinner, Middlesex, in 1947?
Reginald
Reginald Dwight built his stage name from two bandmates in Bluesology, saxophonist Elton Dean and singer Long John Baldry, and made it legal in 1972.
Q 28What is the real first name of Magic Johnson, the Lakers point guard given his nickname at fifteen by a sportswriter?
Earvin
Earvin Johnson Jr. was dubbed Magic after a triple-double in a high school game, though his devout mother thought the nickname sacrilegious.
Q 29Which US president, who loathed the nickname, gave the teddy bear its name after a 1902 hunting trip?
Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt refused to shoot a black bear that his hunting party had tied to a willow tree, and a Washington Post cartoon of the episode ran that same month.
Q 30What is the first name of Inspector Morse, the Oxford detective created by novelist Colin Dexter?
Endeavour
Endeavour was the ship of the explorer Captain Cook, whom Morse's father admired, and his Quaker mother's tradition of virtue names did the rest. The novels hid it until Death Is Now My Neighbour.