Tyra Banks Reveals the ‘Cheerleader’ Name Her Mom Almost Gave Her

Tyra Banks is sharing the plans her mom initially had for her name.

During the Tuesday, April 15, episode of Today with Jenna & Friends, the 51-year-old former supermodel revealed to Jenna Bush Hager, 43, what she truly thought of what her family wanted to name her.

“Tell me about ‘Tyra.’ Did you like it growing up?” Bush Hager asked her co-host.

The America’s Next Top Model creator said her name was a joint effort from her family after her mother simplified a moniker that the model’s grandmother had chosen.

“But my mom told me that she was gonna name me ‘Kelly Banks,’” she confessed.

“Kelly Banks?” Bush Hager repeated as if she were trying to picture the mogul as anything other than “Tyra.”

Banks added, “And I wonder if I was Kelly Banks, what would I be?”

“It sounds like a cheerleader name,” Banks said, mocking a gleeful chant as she spelled the name out. “It feels like a happy name!”

Bush Hager pointed out that when they “were growing up,” Kelly “was a common name.”

The former Victoria’s Secret Angel agreed, adding that girls named “Kelly” were usually “popular” back in their day. Both ladies even had Barbie dolls named Kelly.

While on the topic of names, Banks recalled several times throughout her decades-long career when she tried to reinvent herself with variations of her name.

“When I first started modeling, it was ‘Tyra Banks,’ and then I got to Paris and I was like, ‘I gotta take off the ‘Banks,’ so I was ‘Tyra,’ ” she said.

However, things changed when she began getting more career opportunities.

“And then I started acting on the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, and the first time I saw the credits at the end of the show, it just said ‘Tyra,’ and I thought that didn’t look professional, so I added ‘Banks’ back,” she said.

During her time on the early 1990s sitcom, Banks starred as Jackie Ames — a childhood friend and past girlfriend of Will Smith who reunited with him after accepting a basketball scholarship to UCLA.

But the memories didn’t stop there!

According to Banks, there was one name that seemed to slip past a lot of people while she was doing a bit of rebranding.

She admitted that after retiring from modeling, she considered changing the spelling of her last name by changing the “K-S” to “X” as in “Banx” — however, “that didn’t stick.”