She was born Alaia Furniturewalla. But then, the daughter of Pooja Bedi and Farhan Funiturewalla has now changed her name to Alaya F.
“There were a lot of people who started getting confused about the name since Alia Bhatt already exists for the last eight years. So, the initial choice was to name herself with an extra ‘a’ — Aalia. But then that too was sounding similar. So, Alia became Alaya,” an industry source reveals.
“We know her from school as Aalia and now we hear that it is Alaya. Fair enough if you want to sound different and make a mark for yourself,” says a school friend.
Incidentally, Aalia’s mother Pooja also had a name close to Alia’s sister Pooja Bhatt, but neither changed their spellings or names. There are also two Kritis in the film industry now —Kriti Sanon and Kriti Kharbanda. There are four Sunnys now — Sunny Deol, Sunny Leone, Sunny Singh and Sunny Kaushal as well.
Shakti Kapoor, who was Sunil Kapoor, changed his name long ago at the insistence of Sunil Dutt.
