Oprah wasn't always Oprah: Her birth name revealed

Oprah Winfrey is a household name,but it turns out "Oprah" is not her real name. A little known fact about the 61-year-old media mogul -- her family wanted to give her a Biblical name, so they went with a name from the Book of Ruth.

"My Aunt Ida had chosen the name, but nobody really knew how to spell it, so it went down as 'Orpah' on my birth certificate, but people didn't know how to pronounce it, so they put the "P" before the "R" in every place else other than the birth certificate," she told the American Academy of Achievement back in 1991.

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"On the birth certificate it is Orpah, but then it got translated to Oprah, so here we are. But that's great because Oprah spells Harpo backwards. I don't know what Orpah spells."

It spells Hapro -- which doesn't sound nearly as nice as Harpo, the name of Oprah's production company. Harpo is also the name of Oprah's on-screen husband in the 1985 film "The Color Purple." I bet you didn't know that either!

Oprah through the years:

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