Bob Dylan

photo : wikimedia commons          

Bob Dylan original name was Robert Allen Zimmerman, he started using the name Bob Dylan around college.

In his memoir he said he wanted to use the name Dillon, but then he saw poems by DylanThomas and preffered the less common name Dylan.

Before he setteled on the name Bob Dylan he called himself  Elston Gunn and later tried the name  Robert Allen.

 in Chronicles he wrote “The Elston Gunn name thing was only temporary, What I was going to do as soon as I left home was just called myself Robert Allen. As far as I was concerned, that was who I was – that’s what my parents named me. It sounded like the name of a Scottish king, and I liked it. There was little of my identity that wasn’t in it.”

The name bob dylan came automaticlly as he said in Chronicles: 

“The first time I was asked my name in the Twin Cities, I instinctively and automatically, without thinking, simply said: Bob Dylan. Now, I had to get used to people calling me Bob.” 

in an interview in 2004 he explained:

,You're born, you know, the wrong names"

.wrong parents. I mean, that happens

"You call yourself what you want to call yourself. This is the land of the free

He was born to a jewish family and his Hebrew name is :

Shabtai Zisl ben Avraham