Deion Sanders Dropped The Truth About His Real Name—And It’s Wildly Unexpected

Deion Sanders goes by many names. Deion, Prime Time, Neon Deion, Coach Prime… and, I guess that's about it.

Still, four is more than most of us.

But, believe it or not, his real first name is not Deion, and the way he got his famous first name is just straight up bizarre.

Sanders was a guest on the New Heights podcast hosted by Jason and Travis Kelce when the former asked if it was true that "Deion" is not the name on the Colorado Buffaloes coach's birth certificate.

"Is it true that your name is actually spelled ‘Dion ’?" Jason asked. "D-I-O-N."

"Where are you guys getting this stuff from?" Sanders replied. "That is true."

Whoa. This feels like one of those Matrix moments. What else is a lie?

But how did that rogue "E" weasel its way into the much more streamlined, four-letter, original version of Sanders' first name?

"Let me tell you what I did," Sanders said. "You know, kids going to school, learning how to spell, and we all learned this song."

He then told the Kelces that if he did the first part, they'd have to handle the second part.

"Old MacDonald had a farm," Sanders sang.

"E-I-E-I-O," Jason and Kelce responded (with a bit of trouble for some reason).

Sanders explained that he switched the spelling of his name to "D-E-I-O-N" because of the song, and that's how he has always spelled it, despite the discrepancy on his birth certificate.

If you gave me a thousand guesses as to how he threw that "E" in the middle of his name, I don't think I would've come up with the "Old MacDonald" connection.

I would've guessed that there were already several other Dions in his class, or that he added the "E" to climb up the alphabetical order a couple of spots.

Whatever the reason, it happened, and the rest is history.