When Zahara Marley Jolie introduced herself to her sorority sisters at Spelman College in 2023, she used a name that pointedly excluded her father’s surname. “My name is Zahara Marley Jolie,” she said in a video from that year. What might have seemed like a casual preference then became official record on Saturday, May 17, 2026, when the 21-year-old walked across the graduation stage and accepted her diploma under that same name — Jolie only, no Pitt.
A video of the ceremony, shared on Reddit and circulating widely across entertainment platforms, captured the moment her name was announced as she received her degree. The clip appears to confirm what fans had long suspected: the second-eldest daughter of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt has formally dropped her father’s last name.
A Tribute Just Weeks Before
Only weeks before commencement, Jolie traveled to the Atlanta campus to watch Zahara deliver a speech at her sorority. A clip from that address, posted on X, showed the graduating senior reflecting on her upbringing and her bond with the woman who raised her.
“My mom and I have a unique, almost kindred relationship that can be hard to put into words,” Zahara said in the speech. She described being adopted at six months old and being given siblings she called “some of the most special and loving people,” crediting her mother with raising the family on principles of kindness, service, and personal growth.
The remarks were warm, specific, and pointed in only one direction. For a family that has historically kept private matters private, the speech was unusually revealing.
A Pattern Among the Siblings
Zahara is not alone among her siblings in distancing herself from the Pitt surname. Maddox, adopted in 2002, Vivienne, one half of the twins born in 2008, and Shiloh have also dropped Pitt from their public-facing names since their parents’ separation. The Jolie-Pitt children — Maddox, Zahara, Pax, who was adopted from an orphanage in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, in 2007, Shiloh, born in 2006, and twins Knox and Vivienne — have largely stayed out of the public eye through the long unraveling of their parents’ marriage.
The unraveling began in 2016, when Jolie filed for divorce, and stretched on through years of legal disputes before being finalized in December 2024. The surname changes have accumulated in the months since.
From Freshman to Graduate at a Historic Institution
Zahara, who was adopted from Ethiopia at six months old in 2005, enrolled at the historically Black women’s college in 2022. Her mother celebrated the milestone with a public post on Instagram, writing “Zahara with her Spelman sisters! Congratulations to all new students starting this year. A very special place and an honor to have a family member as a new Spelman girl.”
The choice of school was widely read as meaningful. In a previous interview with Time, Jolie described Zahara as an extraordinary African woman whose relationship to her heritage was hers alone to shape. The actress has spoken publicly about her daughter’s bond with the African continent and the importance of letting Zahara define that connection on her own terms.
Four years later, that arc reached a turning point on the Spelman campus, with her mother again in the audience.
A Personal Milestone With Public Weight
Zahara has appeared alongside her mother at high-profile events in recent years, including the 2025 Golden Globes and an outing in New York City in 2023, but those appearances have skewed celebratory rather than political. The graduation falls somewhere in between — a personal milestone that nonetheless carries the unmistakable weight of a choice.
The Pitt-Jolie split has played out in unusually public fashion for a family that, by Hollywood standards, has tried hard to remain guarded. Court filings, custody disputes, and a lengthy property battle dragged on for eight years between the 2016 separation and the December 2024 finalization. Throughout, the children have been the quietest figures in the saga — until they have not.
Neither Jolie nor Pitt has publicly addressed the name change. The actor, for his part, has spent the past year promoting film work and giving sparse interviews about his personal life. Jolie has continued her humanitarian work and recent acting projects.
For Zahara, the next chapter begins under a name she has been quietly testing for years and now wears openly. The diploma reads Jolie. The signal, by now, is clear.