Source: Frazer Harrison / Getty
Well, on a recent episode of
Jimmy Kimmel Live!, he blamed his mom for the mix-up.
The conversation came up when Kimmel mentioned that four NFL players share his first name, and Washington took credit for the rising popularity but explained that his name is actually pronounced differently.
“…Because my name’s not pronounced Den-Zel, my name’s pronounced Den-Zuhl,” before explaining around the 7:30 mark that his mom has to differentiate him from his namesake father.
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“My father’s Denzel Hayes Washington Sr. I’m Denzel Hayes Washington Jr. My mom would say ‘Den-Zuhl’ and we’d both show up. So she said, ‘From now on, you’re Den-Zel,” Washington recalled. “So that’s how I got pronounced Den-Zel.”
Kimmel breaks down that the name started popping up in the NFL only after the actor’s first Oscar, overtaking more traditional names like Dennis, Walt, and the occasional Cornelius.
“There ought to be some compensation for this. Should there not?” Washington jokes while Kimmel agrees that he should get a small percentage of each jersey sale.
At the end of the interview, Washington pulls a true Hollywood move while discussing spending New Year’s Eve with George Clinton and Lenny Kravitz by whipping out his phone to call the latter.
After getting Kravitz to answer his
FaceTime, he decided to flip the camera around to the audience and jokingly told him to perform for the crowd.
Washington has been making the rounds promoting his fifth film with
Spike Lee,
Highest 2 Lowest, which also stars A$AP Rocky.
This isn’t the first time he’s tried to correct the public’s pronunciation of his name, though, having previously explained it overseas during an appearance on
The Graham Norton Show in 2013.
See social media’s reaction to realizing they’ve been pronouncing his name wrong for decades below.
