Lots of celebrities have names that are frequently mispronounced, and there are a few courses of action they can take: They can get used to correcting people, they can let it slide, or they can choose to go by a different moniker. Sunny Hostin had this issue, as "Sunny" is not the name the co-host of The View was born with; however, it turns out it wasn’t exactly her choice to stop using her Spanish name on TV in favor of a stage name, and she recently explained how Nancy Grace was involved in that change.
Before joining The View in 2016, Sunny Hostin — whose name at birth was Asunción Cummings — provided legal commentary alongside Nancy Grace on Court TV. On PBS’ Finding Your Roots (via Deadline), the lawyer discussed how Grace had difficulty pronouncing “Asunción” and asked if there was something else she could call her. In Hostin’s words:
She struggled, every take. It was just so crazy. She couldn’t get it. [Nancy Grace] said, at the break, ‘Can I say something to you?’ I was like, ‘Sure.’ She was like, ‘Do you have another name? A nickname? I don’t know.’ And she just kept at it. She was basically telling me, You’re very good at this, but that name is not gonna fly. You need to just go by a nickname.
Sunny Hostin recalled being asked by her colleague if there was another name she went by, other than Asunción, but Hostin informed her that Asunción was how she was known both personally and professionally. She continued:
I said, ‘Well, some friends in school who couldn’t pronounce my name call me Sunny. But, no one in my family calls me Sunny, I don’t use it professionally. And the next segment, I was Sunny Hostin.
It sounds like Nancy Grace made the choice for Sunny Hostin to change her professional name, and I can’t imagine how it made Hostin feel to think that her legal name Asunción was “not gonna fly” in her TV career.
Sunny Hostin went on to discuss how her career changed after she stopped using her Spanish name, saying that “all of a sudden, people remembered who I was.” The fact that Sunny’s “career took off” where Asunción’s hadn’t said “something about our world,” Hostin mused.
The lawyer, TV host and author has now been giving her takes on water cooler topics from the worlds of news, politics, pop culture and entertainment on The View for eight years now. In addition to sharing her opinion on vacation whoopie and defending Dolly Parton’s Dallas Cowboy cheerleading performance, Sunny Hostin has even drawn praise from Meghan McCain — who continues to slam The View and its co-hosts — as she has called Hostin “one of the greatest TV presences in all of television,” with more political savvy than any of the other people she worked with on the ABC talk show.
If you want to see Asunción Hostin, or rather, Sunny Hostin tackling hot topics on The View, tune in weekdays at 11 a.m. ET on ABC, and also be sure to check out our 2024 TV schedule to see which of your favorite shows are starting soon.
