Oprah Winfrey left Kiki Palmer speechless when she revealed her real name is Opa.
“No, it’s not,” the talk show icon gushed to the stunned actress during Tuesday’s episode of “Baby, This Is KeKi Palmer.”
The TV star then explained the Biblical background and the background behind the name.
“Ruth, chapter 1, verse 14. This is the entire story of Ruth and Naomi,” she said.
“And, you know, Ruth said, ‘Wherever you go, I will go.’ And Orpah said, ‘I will return.’ sorry. you can’t. It’s too long. The road is too long. ”
Palmer asked why Winfrey felt the need to change her name to Oprah, to which Winfrey replied, “Because I was a kid.”
“No one knew how to spell it,” she recalled.
“So it turned out on my birth certificate that it was Orpah,” she explained. “And people started calling me Oprah. So it’s just the difference whether the P is before the R or after the R. So if they start with Oprah, that’s it.”
The 72-year-old TV personality revealed that she was around 20 years old when she finally learned that the name on her birth certificate was different from what her friends and family called her.
Oprah pointed out that the “Akeela and the Bees” star, 32, has another name listed on her birth certificate: Lauren Kiana Palmer.
“I’m so glad you know that!” exclaimed Palmer.
Winfrey also playfully names her media empire Harpo Productions, which is simply Oprah spelled backwards.
A 1983 audition tape that Winfrey resurfaced during a 2005 episode of “The Oprah Winfrey Show” contained details about the background behind her name.
“My family didn’t really like Harpo Marx,” she said, referring to the Marx Brothers comedians.
“For many years, we didn’t even have a television. My Aunt Ida originally named me after Orpah from the Book of Ruth, chapter 1, verse 14 in the Bible, and no one in my house knew how to spell it, so I became Oprah.”
