Trivial Pursuits: Was David Bowie's Name Change a Space Oddity?

The sometimes actor and rocker (a.k.a. Ziggy Stardust) – with hits like “Fame”, “Space Oddity”, “Under Pressure”, and “Suffragette City” to his name – was actually born David Robert Jones in September 1947.

However, he changed his name in 1966 for a very specific reason.  Do you know what it was? 

Answer:  

During the early 1960s, Bowie was performing either under his own name or the stage name “Davie Jones”, and briefly even as “Davy Jones”, creating confusion with Davy Jones of The Monkees.  To avoid this, in 1966 he chose “Bowie” for his stage name (after the Alamo hero Jim Bowie and his famous Bowie knife).