Pamela Anderson has revealed she is eager to honour her family history and change her surname.
The model and actress is best known for rising to fame after featuring in Playboy magazine, before later going on to star in the TV series Baywatch in the 1990s.
Born in Canada, the daughter of a furnace repairman and a waitress, Pamela’s paternal great-grandfather Juho Hyytiäinen left Finland and immigrated in 1908.
Upon arriving in Canada, he changed his surname to Anderson.
Now, more than a century later, Pamela has revealed she wants to revert the family surname back to its original form.
The 58-year-old has explained her desire to convert her name to Hyytiäinen in to reflect her Finnish ancestry.
‘Sometimes I don’t want to be Pamela Anderson. I want to be Pamela Hyytiäinen,’ she told Vogue Scandinavia in a recent interview.
‘I would like to change my name, but they won’t let me.’
Although she didn’t specify who was blocking her desire to change her name, it’s likely Pamela was referring to her management.
Since rising to fame in 1989 – she has always been known by her birth surname.
In the interview, Pamela also reflected on her relationship with her late grandfather Herman – a logger and poet who also taught her to speak Finnish.
Although the actress said she would regularly carry a dictionary around with her, his death when she was 11 meant she stopped learning the language.
‘He was the closest person to me in my life…[then the language] kind of left with him,’ she shared.
However, in 2007 she travelled to Finland with her father and other relatives – now explaining how she is keen to return with her two sons – Brandon, 29, and Dylan, 27, who she shares with ex-husband Tommy Lee.
‘I’d love to go back to Finland, maybe with my sons. To find out more about myself, to explore that side of me. Maybe we will change my name and go back, to answer to my roots. It feels distant, but it’s a part of me. I’ve always been proud to tell people I’m Finnish, even before I knew what that really meant,’ she said.
On her mother’s side, Pamela also has Volga German ancestry. Her grandmother, Rose Friesen, was ethnically German, but born in a Mennonite village in Russia and immigrated to Canada in 1901.
In 2019 the actress shared a post on Twitter highlighting her heritage, writing: ‘My real last name is Hyytiänen – my father’s grandfather came from Finland. He changed our name to Anderson when he arrived in Canada. My mother’s grandmother came from Russia…I am a citizen of the world though I was born in Canada.’
A few years earlier she’d told Esquire about the family’s name change too, sharing of her great-grandfather: ‘All of his brothers changed their names, too, so I have a feeling that maybe something bad happened in Finland.’
Pamela has previously been married five times but has always chosen to keep her name in some form.
Just four days after meeting Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee in 1995, Pamela tied the knot with him.
During their marriage the couple had their two sons, before eventually splitting three years later.
She then went on to marry Kid Rock in 2006, but their marriage ended within the year.
In 2007 she then tied the knot with Rick Salomon, but that marriage was over within a year too. They later remarried in 2015 but again split a year later.
She was most recently married to her bodyguard, Dan Hayhurst, from 2020 until 2022.
Earlier this year Pamela linked to her The Naked Gun co-star Liam Neeson, whom she revealed earlier this week she’d been ‘romantically involved with for a short while’ after filming wrapped.
‘I always was laughing when people thought, “Oh, that’s a publicity stunt”. I’m like, “A publicity stunt? This is real. We have real feelings”,’ she told People.
‘I adore Liam, but we are better friends, in full honesty.’
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