5 WWE Superstars and what their names were originally going to be

#4 Roman Reigns almost had no surname

'Roman Reigns' is much better than plain 'Roman'

Okay, so it’s not the most drastic of name changes, but Roman Reigns could have simply been known as Roman had it not been for a conversation with Corey Graves one day in 2012.

WWE was looking to repackage Reigns, then known as Leakee, during his days in the FCW development system and he was asked to come up with potential names for his new character.

The three-time WrestleMania main-eventer revealed on Talk Is Jericho in 2017 that he was going to ask if he could be called Roman until a few words of wisdom from wrestler-turned-commentator Graves helped change his mind.

There was another FCW performer at the time called Calvin Raines who had recently left the company, and Graves had the idea to add the ‘Raines’ surname to Roman’s name, with the spelling changed to ‘Reigns’ to make him sound like a king.