J.K. Rowling’s full first name is Joanne Kathleen, although she is widely known by the initials J.K. Rowling.
Rowling was born Joanne Rowling on 31 July 1965 in Yate, Gloucestershire, England. She did not originally have a middle name. For publication, Bloomsbury asked her to use initials because the publisher believed that some boys might avoid a book written by a woman. Rowling chose K for Kathleen, her paternal grandmother’s name.
The name is therefore a publishing name rather than her complete birth name. She has also written under the pen name Robert Galbraith, particularly for the Cormoran Strike detective novels. The initials J.K. became closely associated with the Harry Potter series, but the “K” was added for professional reasons and was not part of her name at birth.