Carly Rae Jepsen has clarified the reason behind using her middle name as part of her professional branding.
During a guest appearance on the Therapuss podcast, host Jake Shane noted that she introduced herself as “Carly Jepsen” when she auditioned for Canadian Idol in 2007, but appended her middle name later as the competition progressed.
Jepsen attributed the change to a straightforward administrative slip rather than a deliberate rename.
“Okay, fun fact, want to know how Carly Rae came to be? I’ve never shared this story,” she began. “My full legal name is Carly Rae Jepsen, and my mom has always called me Carly Rae, but not everyone did. In high school I went by Carly—just Carly. Then at Canadian Idol, they asked us to write our full name, and I took it very literally and wrote, ‘Carly Rae Jepsen.’ The next day they told me to use ‘Carly Rae.'”
Rather than correcting the producers, she decided that Carly Rae Jepsen sounded more memorable for a contestant.
“I figured, perhaps it’s more memorable — because it’s a competition — maybe they’ll remember me,” she recalled. “And that stayed, and it’s been that way ever since.”
She finished in third place, a position she says she appreciates because it gave her a launchpad for her singing career while leaving the freedom to choose her own record deal.
“I had a pretty lucky run because I gained notoriety but faced no contract, so it felt like a wonderful starting point,” she noted, adding that she landed a management team and a record deal as a result of the show.
The Canadian singer-songwriter later broke through commercially with her second studio album Kiss and its 2011 lead single, Call Me Maybe.
