Keith Urban's Real Name: Keith Lionel Urban

Quick answer: The singer is known professionally as Keith Urban. Biography.com and Britannica independently give the fuller form Keith Lionel Urban and date his birth to October 26, 1967, in Whangarei, New Zealand. Britannica specifies Whangarei, North Island (Biography.com; Britannica).

Real name and early life

Independent publishers support the documented full name Keith Lionel Urban. Britannica says his family moved from New Zealand to Queensland, Australia, when he was two, that he was given a ukulele at four and took up the guitar at six, began entering talent competitions at about age eight, played guitar gigs in pubs and clubs as a teenager, and quit school at 15 to pursue music. Biography.com independently records the Whangarei birth and describes him as growing up in Australia on American country music.

Career highlights

Britannica says that in 1988 he formed a band that toured Australia, that two years later a festival award led to a contract with EMI Music Australia, and that his first album, Keith Urban, was released in 1991. It says he moved to Nashville in 1992, formed a band later known as the Ranch, whose self-titled debut appeared in 1997, and that after a medical condition temporarily prevented him from singing he played guitar on albums for other artists, including Garth Brooks, before releasing his first American solo album, also titled Keith Urban, in 1999, scoring a number-one Billboard country single with "But for the Grace of God." Later albums named by Britannica include Golden Road (2002), Be Here (2004), Defying Gravity (2009), Get Closer (2010), Fuse (2013), and Ripcord (2016). It lists four Grammy Awards for best male country vocal performance, in 2005, 2007, 2009, and 2010, induction into the Grand Ole Opry in 2012, which it calls one of country music's highest honors, and work as a judge on American Idol from 2013 to 2016. Biography.com independently identifies him as a Grammy-winning country singer known for "Blue Ain't Your Color," "Somebody Like You," and "Better Life," and also notes his later work as an American Idol judge.

Name notes for searchers

People looking up Keith Urban or Keith Lionel Urban are looking for the same New Zealand-born Australian country singer. Independent sources support the fuller form used in the title.