Kim Kardashian reveals ‘Kim’ isn’t her real name and was changed last-minute for reality TV

Kim Kardashian says the name most people know her by was actually a last-minute change. In a recent interview with Time, the 45-year-old entrepreneur and SKIMS founder said she stopped using “Kimberly” just before Keeping Up with the Kardashians launched in 2007. “I used to always go by Kimberly, until we signed on to do the reality show. And when I looked at my chyron, Kimberly Kardashian, I said, ‘I think that’s so long for people to say.’ And like, ‘Let’s just shorten it to Kim,’” she said. She added that her late father, Robert Kardashian, and all her childhood friends still called her by her full name: “And it’s so weird, because all my friends from high school and growing up, and my dad, everyone calls me Kimberly.” The switch happened just as the family began filming what became a 20-season series. When the original show wrapped in 2021, the family moved to Hulu for The Kardashians. The Time interview also touched on Kardashian’s long-running plan to become a lawyer. She said she chose to publicly disclose that she failed her first attempt at the bar exam because the results were about to go online: “You get the results on a Friday, and I knew Sunday morning they were going to be live on the Internet. So, I wanted to mention it first and let people know that it didn’t go my way,” she said. “So, instantly I was like, ‘OK, let’s do this, I know what I’ve got to do.’ This really sucks because I put so much time into it, but I know what I can do better. I’m pretty good at taking a failure and turning it into something, and I just don’t have the time to dwell.” Kardashian has been studying law since 2019 and recently completed her legal education program. In a separate interview with the New York Post, she also said she was the one who pushed hardest for the family to do reality TV.

“I think I was the one that convinced everyone for sure. I really wanted it. I really wanted to do a reality show since the day MTV’s The Real World came out and I watched it with my best friend,” she said. “I looked at her and I told her, ‘That’s what I’m going to do.’” She said she persuaded her sisters by presenting the show as a way to draw attention to their then-new Dash boutique. “The whole reason we wanted to start our show was to bring attention to our Dash store–at least that’s how I was able to get my sisters to sign on,” she said. “I let them know that, you know, it’ll bring such great promotion to our store. And they were in once they heard that.” Kardashian is currently promoting her first MasterClass course, The New Rules of Business: The Ten Kimmandments with Kim Kardashian, now available on the platform.