3 Messages

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92 Points

Tuesday, May 6th, 2025 2:10 AM

Solved

"As a different name"??

There's an IMDb profile for an actress named Gloria Tesch, who recently began self-publishing books under the pseudonym "Sofia Nova" (she has no acting credits as "Sofia Nova" and this is not her legal name). I noticed a Quora thread pointing out that Tesch, or whichever party manages her profile, has removed the name "Gloria Tesch" and replaced it with "as a different name". It seems to be upsetting some people online and I have to admit it's confusing. Is there any way that the information can be fixed? I understand this actress is trying to start a new writing career under the "Sofia Nova" pseudonym but all of her acting roles have her credited as Gloria Tesch, which someone has stripped from the IMDb page for the actress entirely. There's also another actress in California whose legal name and acting name actually IS Sofia Nova, so this just makes it even more confusing.

3 Messages

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92 Points

1 month ago

This is the Quora thing I found: https://www.quora.com/Why-is-the-actor-Gloria-Tesch-listed-on-IMDb-as-Another-Name-and-Sofia-Nova-despite-being-credited-in-all-of-her-film-appearances-as-Gloria-Tesch

Champion

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7.7K Messages

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279.2K Points

1 month ago

The "as a different name" attribute was created, most likely, so that transgender people could avoid revealing their former names. However, since IMDb could not limit this attribute by gender identity, it is available to anyone. At least "Gloria Tesch" and "Sofia Nova" are very different names. All too often, people use the "as a different name" attribute for inappropriate purposes such as hiding a middle initial or a nickname. Nobody has ever explained a good reason why they would want to do that. I suspect that some of them might be doing so because they misunderstood the purpose of the attribute, but I can't be sure.