Pamela Anderson Says She’s Seriously Thinking About Dropping “Anderson” for Her Original Finnish Family Name

For more than three decades, the name Pamela Anderson has been impossible to separate from red swimsuits, slow-motion beach runs, and 90s tabloid madness. But the 58-year-old star is now openly talking about leaving that surname behind and reclaiming the one her family had before they emigrated from Finland: Hyytiäinen.

In a new interview with Vogue Scandinavia, Pamela explained that her grandfather, Herman Hyytiäinen, changed the name to Anderson after arriving in Canada, probably because it sounded more “North American.” Growing up, Herman was the most important person in her life.

He was a logger, a poet, and (in her words) someone who genuinely believed in fairies and trees that whispered to each other. He taught little Pamela to speak Finnish, which she thought was a secret, magical language that only the two of them understood.

When he died, she was around 11, and the language “kind of left with him.” She still carried a Finnish dictionary everywhere as a kid, learning new words just to make him smile.

“Sometimes I don’t want to be Pamela Anderson anymore,” she told the magazine. “I want to be Pamela Hyytiäinen.”

She even tried to make the change official, but “they won’t let me,” she says with a laugh (without naming exactly who “they” are; probably a mix of agents, lawyers, and decades of branding).

The idea isn’t completely new. Back in 2015 she told Esquire that all of her grandfather’s brothers changed their names too, and she’s always suspected “something bad happened in Finland” that made the family want a fresh start. Now, older and noticeably happier living a quieter life on Vancouver Island, she feels ready to circle back to those roots.

“I’d love to go to Finland with my sons, dig a little deeper, maybe even change my name and just… answer to it again,” she said. “I’ve always been proud to say I’m Finnish, even when I barely knew what that meant.”

Meanwhile, the internet spent half of 2025 convinced she was dating Liam Neeson after their very flirty press tour for The Naked Gun reboot. Turns out (according to pretty much everyone who was on set) it was just an old-school studio marketing trick. Once the cameras stopped, so did the texting.

So while the gossip columns have moved on, Pamela seems focused on something much bigger than headlines: finally becoming the version of herself that her grandfather would recognise.

Would you ever change your last name to honour your roots? I think Pamela Hyytiäinen has a pretty nice ring to it.