What was J.K. Rowling’s birth name before she used the professional initials J.K.?

J.K. Rowling’s birth name was Joanne Rowling.

She was born Joanne Rowling on 31 July 1965. Rowling did not originally have a middle name. When Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was prepared for publication, Bloomsbury reportedly wanted a name that might appeal to boys as well as girls and asked her to use initials rather than her first name.

The “K” in J.K. Rowling was taken from Kathleen, the first name of her paternal grandmother. Rowling has sometimes been incorrectly described as having been born Joanne Kathleen Rowling, but Kathleen was added for her publishing identity rather than being part of her birth name. She married Neil Murray in 2001 and is also known as Joanne Murray in some biographical contexts.

Her professional name became internationally associated with the Harry Potter books. The initials were retained even after readers learned that the author was a woman, while her crime novels were later published under the separate name Robert Galbraith.