What was Georgia O’Keeffe’s birth name before she became widely known by her married name?

Georgia O’Keeffe’s birth name was Georgia Totto O’Keeffe. She was born Georgia Totto O’Keeffe on November 15, 1887, in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, and continued to use O’Keeffe as her family surname throughout her life.

The middle name Totto came from her maternal grandfather, George Victor Totto, who was of Hungarian descent. O’Keeffe’s family background therefore included both Irish and Hungarian ancestry, a detail sometimes omitted in short biographies.

She married Alfred Stieglitz in 1924, but she did not become known primarily through a change of surname. “Georgia O’Keeffe” was already the name under which her art career had developed, and it remained her professional identity during her marriage and after Stieglitz’s death.