So when Yvonne Strahovski first hit my radar, I only found her listed as Yvonne Strzechowski. I didn’t pretend to know how to say it, and I certainly couldn’t remember how to spell it.

Then she was suddenly Yvonne Strahovski. Well that was a welcome change in terms of my own memory and ability to quickly spell her name.

But Google sure thinks that when I search for Strahovski what I really mean is Strahovsky. Now that’s clearly not what I mean, but I wonder why Google thinks that?

As difficult as Strzechowski was to pronounce and say, it was Yvonne’s birth name and I feel kind of bad that she felt the need to abandon it just to cater to people who were so xenophobic that they didn’t wanna bother learning how to spell it.

On the other hand, changing her name to the phonetic spelling of her Polish family name does make it easier for her to get her name out there and attract fans. Surely fans are a staple of any long acting career.

I’ve often wondered exactly how the process of changing one’s name for acting goes down. Are actors advised to change their names or do they decide to do so on their own?

Did NBC strongly recommend it for their own ratings, or did Ms. Strahovski decide to do it for the good of her career?

I guess we may never know.