A few more fun facts: Because of a stutter, her brother couldn’t pronounce her name. He would refer to her as “My” or “Mya Sister.” Maya became her nickname. Angelou comes from her first ...

But it was Maya, the nickname her older brother gave her, that eventually stuck. She took the surname Angelou, a version of her Greek American ex-husband’s name, while working at San Francisco ...

Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Johnson on April 4, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri. She went by Marguerite for many years before adopting the name Maya, a nickname that her brother used to call her ...