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"  Miss USA Nia Sanchez recently revealed the craziest piece of advice she ever received on the beauty pageant circuit: &amp;quot;Change your last name.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t think I&amp;#039;ve ever told anyone this, but I had someone tell me, &amp;#039;You should change your last name. Your last name is Sanchez; you should go by, like, a stage name because you might have a better chance,&amp;#039;&amp;quot; the half-Mexican beauty queen told HuffPost Live. &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m proud of who I am and I definitely did not follow that advice. I just kind of thought that they sounded crazy, to be honest. I was like, &amp;#039;What! Change my name? No, I love my name.&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Sanchez isn&amp;#039;t alone. In recent months, several high-profile Latinos like John Leguizamo and Andy Garcia have come out about how, early on in their careers, they were urged to change their last names to avoid being typecast or pigeonholed. Like them, Sanchez refused to change her name, choosing instead to represent her cultura as her star continues to rise. &amp;quot;I have been competing for five years and being on the stage of Miss USA was my dream and it&amp;#039;s something that came true with persistence,&amp;quot; Sanchez said. &amp;quot;So I just always want to encourage women to do that, especially as a Latina woman.&amp;quot; \u00A0 RELATED: 16 Strereotypes of Latinas That Need to Stop Follow Tanisha on Twitter. Photo credit: Getty Images "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/entertainment/news/a27108/nia-sanchez-told-to-change-name/>