Does he have a new one? He looks the same to me.

Someone told me Ben Bateman has one now. Sigh.

It doesn’t help that the company founders in Europe were playing out some weird, specific fantasy of their own. The names “Bel Ami” and “George Duroy” come from a 19th century French novel, and I suspect if we did a little research, we’d find that the early stars all were handed names that fit some similar obscure theme. In like manner, William Higgins had some fascination with classical music, and his names were either musical (Dvorak, Bartok) or political (Dubcek, Pravda).

It is likely a mix of porn studios wanting to brand their own models, as well as not being aware of the fact that the model/s may have already done work for another studio a week prior under a different porn alias. Some of these models are probably not so adept at developing their brand/image when they first enter the industry. There are no doubt a number of models who are doing porn solely to make some money and could care less about being a household name.

I’ve found that the Euro models are the worst when it comes to picking a name and sticking to it. I’m sure that the language difference has a lot to do with it.

Wow, that’s interesting and makes a lot of sense. My first real love of porn was in the old studio days, when a company would actually invest in a model. Jeff Stryker, from what I’ve read, was just a guy with a big dick. But they groomed him, physically and artistically, until he became box cover material. It’s hard for me to think of a bigger star from the 80s, and they totally manufactured that. Pavel Novotny had a hundred times what Jeff had in terms of looks, but splintered his stardom across multiple noms de fuck. No surprise that the Europeans were not star savvy, especially then. So it’s fascinating to me that Lucas Ridgeston made none of those mistakes and turned porn into such a career that 25 years later, no matter what side of the camera he’s on, there’s a viable argument that he should be on the other side.

And they still made him change his name? I would love to see someone explain the name game in porn. What legal power do they have to make Valentino become Jaxton, or Ryder become Dante, or Jan become Pavel become Max? (I probably have the sequence wrong.) And why did Pierce perform as both Paris and Hartman at the same studio?

Same parent company.