Kim Kardashian underwent a name transformation just before her grand entrance on "Keeping Up with the Kardashians." The 45-year-old star, who was once identified by her full name of Kimberly Kardashian, made a last-minute switch before the show's debut in 2007, realizing that "Kim" was a more palatable moniker for viewers' ears. As she shared with Time magazine, "I used to go by Kimberly until we signed on to do the reality show. I said, 'That's too long for people to say.' Let's just shorten it to Kim.'" The catch was that her high school friends, family, and even her dad all referred to her as Kimberly, making the abbreviation feel odd to her.
In addition to her name change antics, Kim also claimed credit for luring her sisters Kourtney, Khloe, Kendall Jenner, and Kylie Jenner into the world of reality TV with the promise of promoting their LA clothing store DASH. "The whole reason we wanted to start our show was to bring attention to our DASH store," she recalled. "I let them know it would bring great promotion to our store, and they were in once they heard that."
With a passion for reality TV since her early teens, Kim revealed her epiphany moment when she watched MTV's "The Real World" with her best friend. "I looked at her and told her, 'That's what I'm going to do.' She said, 'I'll be your manager.' We were 11 at the time," she recalled. "We even had a plan to get her dad, who was in the music-business management world, to send our tape to MTV." And when it came time for Kim to sign on for "Keeping Up with the Kardashians," she discovered that the producers were the same ones who had produced "The Real World" – a full-circle moment in her reality TV journey.
