In May, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s daughter Shiloh Jolie-Pitt turned 18 and promptly filed to change her name. According to TMZ and People, the teen submitted paperwork requesting to legally remove “Pitt” from her last name, opting to officially go by Shiloh Jolie.
Last week, after a notice of Shiloh’s name change appeared in the Los Angeles Times, tabloids began reporting that she had taken out an ad. On Sunday, Peter Levine, an attorney for Shiloh, told “Page Six” that he merely published a legal notice registering the change because it’s required by California law. “Shiloh Jolie did not take out an ‘ad’ announcing any name change, and any press reporting that is inaccurate,” Levine said, adding that Shiloh “made an independent and significant decision following painful events.”
The filing came amid Jolie and Pitt’s contentious eight-year divorce, during which Jolie accused Pitt of physically abusing her and one of their six children, allegations he denies. In recent years, a few of the kids appear to have distanced themselves from Pitt, at least in name. In 2021, tabloids claimed their oldest son, Maddox, who was 20 at the time, had testified in the former couple’s custody proceedings in a way that “wasn’t very flattering towards Brad” and was no longer using “Pitt” in his name on nonlegal documents.
When their 19-year-old daughter, Zahara, joined the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority at Spelman College last year, she announced herself in an initiation video as “Zahara Marley Jolie.” And in May, People reported that their 15-year-old daughter, Vivienne, who’s credited alongside Angelina as a producer on the Broadway adaptation of The Outsiders, appears in the musical’s playbill as “Vivienne Jolie.” It’s not clear whether any of the children besides Shiloh have made legal motions to change their names.
This post has been updated.
