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Over a dozen years later, Katie Holmes has thoroughly moved on from the Tom Cruise chapter of her life.
So has her daughter.
Continuing the pattern of celebrity kids reaching adulthood and ditching the surnames of their dads who were really hot in the early 1990s, Suri has a new legal name.
There’s no “Cruise” in sight. And, interestingly, no “Holmes.”
It’s official!
Page Six reports that Suri registered to vote during her freshman year at Carnegie Mellon University.
What makes this very standard activity — particularly for an election year (Suri was a freshman in autumn 2024) — remarkable is that voter registrations must be under one’s legal name.
She is registered to vote as “Suri Noelle.” That is the same name that she used in a pamphlet at the end of high school.
Registering to vote like this can only mean that Suri has changed her legal name.
Ditching the “Cruise” surname makes sense. Notably, she has done this very quietly while leading a relatively normal life.
NEW
Suri, Katie Holmes’s daughter, who was abandoned by her biological father, Tom Cruise, legally dropped the last name “Cruise” at some point, per a new report from Page Six.
Suri Noelle is the name she used to register to vote.
Good for her.
A reminder: Tom Cruise… pic.twitter.com/jOkY988VU0
— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) July 27, 2026
The report mentions that Suri did not file for her name change in Allegheny County.
From that, most conclude that she likely sought her name change in New York — before she left for college.
Having a legal name change carries many advantages.
Only one of which is not having to explain to multiple professors, resident advisors, and more why you’d prefer to not have your former name read aloud to a room full of your peers and potential friends.
That has broad applications even if your former surname wasn’t “Cruise.” It was smart of Suri to seek this change beforehand — possibly right after she turned 18.
She’s following Katie Holmes’ example (and saying very little)
Those of us old enough to remember Tom Cruise jumping on Oprah’s couch likely do not need a reminder of how things ended with Katie Holmes.
In 2012, Holmes filed to divorce Cruise after 6 years of marriage.
Divorcing Cruise is a notoriously daunting prospect. To this day, Nicole Kidman avoids speaking ill of Cruise or of Scientology, which some governments have branded as a predatory business rather than as a “religion.”
Holmes has not been outspoken about her erstwhile marriage or about her experiences during that time.
However, in December of 2024, she did confirm that Suri did not have a trust fund from her estranged father. (There were reports of such a fund, which Holmes denied.)
Shiloh Jolie 🤝 Suri Noelle dropping the last names of their problematic, deadbeat dads
— ᴊᴇʟᴀ (@jelevision) June 25, 2024
TMZ reports that, according to their source, Suri has been estranged from her father since she was 7 years old.
With that in mind, the 2024 revelation that she’d used “Suri Noelle” towards the end of high school made a lot of sense.
Only now do we have confirmation that she made this change legally.
Celebrity kids could have any number of reasons to obfuscate a famous — or infamous — parent’s surname. Cruise is both famous and infamous.
But to do this legally seems pretty personal.
It’s easy to ask if Tom Cruise ever cared about her. But many would argue that the best thing that he ever did for Suri was vanishing from her life.