Zahara Jolie has officially dropped Brad Pitt's last name.
The former Zahara Jolie-Pitt is now Zahara Jolie after legally excising her father’s last name, the third child of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie to do so. ew.com/brad-pitt-ange…
28 September 2026 Judge Virginia Keeny in Los Angeles signed an order: the name of 21-year-old Zahara Marley Jolie-Pitt was officially changed to Zahara Marley Jolie. No objections were filed, and the decree took effect immediately.
This is already the third child of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt to legally drop their father's last name. Shiloh and Maddox did the same earlier. Zahara filed the petition back in April, and in June she published notices in the Los Angeles legal newspaper — the standard procedure for a name change in California.
Publicly, she stopped using Pitt's last name long before the court: at her initiation into the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority in 2023, at her graduation from Spelman College in May 2026, and at other events. The court ruling merely formalized what had already become a fact in her everyday life.
Behind the formal procedure lies a decade-long history of estrangement. After the 2016 divorce and the high-profile proceedings that followed, the children have distanced themselves from their father to varying degrees. For Zahara, adopted by Jolie in Ethiopia in 2005, the choice of last name is not just bureaucracy but a public statement of which side she identifies with. Sources close to Pitt call it "total estrangement" and an attempt to divert attention from the actor's successes; Jolie's representatives respond that her daughter simply exercised a legal right and does not comment on the details of family relations.
In 21, Zahara is finishing college, choosing the profession of psychologist, and deciding for herself which name to bear. This is not a sudden gesture but a consistent step that several of her brothers and sisters have already repeated. For her, a last name is not an inheritance but a choice that can be reconsidered when you grow up.
Pitt and Jolie have been officially divorced since December 2024, but the consequences of their split continue to unfold in their children's lives. Zahara is no longer Jolie-Pitt — and this is no longer news but a recorded fact that changes not only documents but also how she will introduce herself to the world going forward.
