Entertainers use stage names often, since complicated names, such as mine, are not easy to pronounce, spell or remember, nor are "attractive".
Being an entertainer, and working in environments with those observations in mind, you'll understand the use of a stage name, or as the banks call it, a "fictitious name".
There still is a stigma with slavic names, and success, in the corporate environment. I've run into that in the past, in dealing in business, my whole life.
Part of it is ethnic beliefs . For example I am the first of at least 5 generations (maybe more since written records were not kept further back) to be a business owner, rather than have a "real job".
While people with a higher level of thinking may disagree, since they, themselves do not discriminate against such names, let's take a view of political or well known corporate figures.
How many people with names such as Kozlewkowchevic are Governors, or members of the House or Senate, let alone past presidents?
How many people in the public eye, that have achieved a large degree of wealth and fame have done it with names such as Dodzembronwsky, or Leztsischmsk in the United States?
How about a news anchor on TV?
I can hear it now. The Tonight Show, starring Yakob Zyndnobrwozis.
As Arsenio Hall used to say, it's just a "thing that makes you go hmmm".
*Note: all the Slavic names I used are real names.
Mark ALLAN (Crnolatas)
_______________________
"A society or group of people exist soley in it's ability to maintain an atmosphere of peace and civility. It's failure is directly relative to the degree of the lack of these conditions".
. As a kind of feminist at least at the time I got married, I thought I should keep my last name. But Don happily pointed out that if he had a last name like mine, he would gladly take my last name. So that settled it. Now I have a last name that most can pronounce even if they normally spell it wrong. It is a big step up from a name no one pronounced right or spelled right.