Skylar Diggins-Smith Has Dropped the Smith, but Why Did She Change Her Name?

As the NBA playoffs continue to heat up, fans are also looking forward to the WNBA season, which will take place over the summer. As fans prepare and rosters are released, Skylar Diggins broke news by announcing that she did not want to be referred to as Skylar Diggins-Smith moving forward.

Following the news about her name change, many wanted to know what might have motivated her decision. Here's what we know.

Reporter Bella Valeriano Munson wrote on X (formerly Twitter) that Skylar's name change was intentional. ”Seattle Storm PR confirms to The Next that Skylar Diggins-Smith would now like to be referred to as Skylar Diggins,” she wrote.

Skylar was naturally asked about her decision at one of the Seattle Storm's media day, but she didn't offer much in the way of a concrete explanation for why she had decided to change her name.

“I see your name tag says Skylar Diggins. So, just wanted to know if that’s how you want us to address you the rest of the year?” a reporter asked.

Diggins confirmed, adding, ”Yes. Thank you for the question, too. It does say Skylar Diggins, and I would like to be addressed as that moving forward.”

Skylar has not officially filed for divorce from her husband, Daniel Smith, but her name has already been changed across her social media accounts and on all Seattle Storm's properties.

For now, then, we don't have any real information about what might have motivated her to change her name, or whether it has anything to do with her relationship with her husband. That's a private matter, and the only thing she wants to change about her public persona is what her last name looks like. Thankfully, that's a decision that's well within her rights to make.

Although Skylar is a public figure, she is not required to offer anyone an explanation for why she's decided to change her name, and we might never have one. It's possible that she simply wanted to assert herself as an independent person, and for that reason, she decided to remove the hyphen from her name. It's just as possible that she didn't want her children to inherit a hyphenated name.

The point is that we have no idea why Skylar decided to change her name, but that doesn't ultimately matter. She's Skylar Diggins, and she deserves to be called that because all of us deserve to be called whatever we want.

This would be equally true no matter what Skylar decided her new name was. She made what was, in reality, a pretty minor change to how we address her, and one that won't have any impact in the world except for on the backs of jerseys. She might share more when she's ready, but if she doesn't, she's well within her rights to withhold.