Portia de Rossi is a name that brings to mind all manner of exotic images. It sounds Italian, and classy, and vaguely aristocratic. You could imagine a woman with a name like that lounging on a recliner in Tuscany, drinking fine wine and enjoying the sun without a care in the world. That, of course, would be a fiction, as is this Australian actress's name. The wife of Ellen DeGeneres is actually plain old Amanda Lee Rogers.
If you're wondering how she arrived at the new name, she's told the story herself. She was always ambitious as a young woman, and by 15 she was getting regular acting work. Feeling that her name was too ordinary to really capture people's attention, she decided to reinvent herself completely, and gave herself a deliberately glamorous and aspirational name. Based on her career trajectory since, it definitely worked. We doubt Amanda Lee Rogers would ever have left Australia.