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Mindy Kaling Calls B.J. Novak an \u201cIntegral Part\u201d of Her Family<\/p>\n
While you may know her as Kelly Kapoor or Mindy Lahiri onscreen, it turns out Mindy Kaling <\/strong><\/a>goes by a few different names offscreen.<\/p>\n And that’s a choice that The Office<\/em><\/a> alum\u2014born Vera Mindy Chokalingam<\/strong>\u2014made early on in her career.<\/p>\n However, Mindy gave fans a glimpse of the initials she prefers to use in real life in an Instagram Story on Feb. 23. While preparing for a flight from Los Angeles to San Francisco, she showed off a red, monogrammed luggage tag with the initials VMK attached to her suitcase\u2014revealing that she apparently uses a hybrid of her real name and stage name in her personal life.<\/p>\n Although the luggage tag still uses the K for Kaling, it still acknowledges the V in Vera, her birth name.<\/p>\n It wasn’t until she started her career in stand-up comedy that the Never Have I Ever <\/em>creator\u00a0thought to change her moniker for work.<\/p>\n “Emcees for these comedy shows would have trouble pronouncing it, and then they’d make a joke about my last name,”\u00a0she shared with NPR in 2020<\/a>. “As a performer, these comedians would just butcher it and then be like, ‘I don’t know what it is! Just this girl, Mindy.'”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n