Disney/Christopher Willard

American Idol fans fell in love with John Foster on Season 23 of the singing competition, but many may not know that “Foster” is actually the teenager’s middle name … not his last name! The country music star’s full name is John Foster Benoit, and he has a reason for omitting the French surname as an artist.

“I’m from Louisiana, have a lot of Cajun heritage, a lot of French heritage,” Foster explained on the Fable House podcast. “My last name is Benoit. That’s something I’ve always been very proud of. I’ve always loved my last name. I’ve always loved the idea of Benoit being, you know, French, being a testament to my heritage. Also, Benoit is a rough translation to ‘blessed’ in English, so I always really loved that.”

He continued, “But when I was getting into country music, I was like, ‘Man, I don’t know if I can go by John Foster Benoit.’ That’s just not really a country name.”

However, he said the “main reason” he’s chosen to go by John Foster is because his dad and grandfather are also both named John Foster Benoit. “They were deciding what to call me. My dad is called Buddy, my granddad was John or Johnny, so I couldn’t go by John, couldn’t go by Buddy,” Foster added. “They were thinking things like ‘Tre’ to differentiate me from my grandfather. And my maternal grandmother said, ‘Why don’t y’all just call him John Foster as his first name?’ It stuck for all my life, really.”

In fact, he considers himself to have a hyphenated name, just without an “authentic hyphen” like someone named Mary-Katherine. “My middle name is still Foster, but I always just went by John Foster,” he shared, adding that he considers it to be a “mononym” like Adele, Prince, or Beyoncé. “People [who] just go by that one name, usually, that’s what’s in my mind,” Foster added. “I just go by my first name. Everybody else thinks my last name’s Foster, but I’ve kind of done a pretty good job at straightening that out.”