| Tiger Woods was first given the legal name Eldrick Woods but that is no longer his name. |  |
Woods got the nickname “Tiger” from a Vietnamese soldier friend of his father, Vuong Dang Phong, to whom his father had also given the nickname Tiger. Woods went by the name Tiger by the time he had achieved national prominence in junior and amateur golf. Woods legally changed his name from Eldrick to Tiger on his twenty-first birthday.
