Pamela Anderson explains why she would ‘like’ to change her name to Pamela Hyytiäinen.
The Baywatch star has opened up about her heritage and the reason why she wants to change her name.
Pamela Anderson said in a new interview that she would like to use her family’s original Finnish surname.
Pamela Anderson sehnt sich nach Finnland, der Heimat ihrer Familie. Offenbar so sehr, dass sie dafür sogar ihren Namen ändern würde: Manchmal wäre sie gern Pamela Hyytiäinen. https://t.co/jDfsVTaNLB
— DER SPIEGEL (@derspiegel) December 4, 2025
The Baywatch star has reflected on what her childhood was like learning Finnish from her grandfather Herman in Canada.
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In an interview with Vogue Scandinavia, the 58-year-old said Herman ‘was the closest person to me in my life’ when she was younger and that she’d ‘love to go back to Finland’ with her two sons. She shares Brandon Thomas Lee and Dylan Jagger Lee with her ex-husband Tommy Lee.
“Sometimes I don’t want to be Pamela Anderson. I want to be Pamela Hyytiäinen” – she said. “I would like to change my name, but they won’t let me.”
As Vogue Scandinavia reported, Anderson’s family used the surname Hyytiäinen before arriving in Canada, when they changed it to a more North American-sounding Anderson. Anderson’s grandfather, Herman, taught her Finnish growing up. As a child, she thought it was “a magical language that no one else could understand,” per the outlet.
“[The language] kind of left with him,” she said of her grandfather, who died when she was around 11 years old.
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Her grandfather, Herman Hyytiäinen, was a logger — as well as a poet who “believed in folklore fairies”, and shared his imaginative universe with his granddaughter.
“I’d love to go back to Finland, maybe with my sons. To find out more about myself, to explore that side of me.”
“Maybe we will change my name and go back, to answer to my roots. It feels distant, but it’s a part of me.”
“I’ve always been proud to tell people I’m Finnish, even before I knew what that really meant ” – she added, noting that when she sees herself with the copper red hair she embraced in October she thinks, “Who is that? Maybe it’s Pamela Hyytiäinen.”
