Khaberni - Phoebe Gates, the daughter of the famous American billionaire and one of the richest men in the world, Bill Gates, revealed why she did not use her father's name until high school, confirming that it was not by accident, but a deliberate decision by her mother Melinda French Gates.
In a recent interview on her podcast "The Burnouts," 22-year-old Stanford graduate Phoebe said, "My parents were very careful that we didn’t use the Gates surname until we reached high school, and we used my mother's surname during our childhood, which helped me make friends in a natural and genuine way."
She added that this policy came from her father's and mother's concern to protect her and her siblings from social pressures and preconceived notions of being the children of one of the world's richest men.
Melinda mentioned in a joint interview with her daughters recently published in Vogue magazine: "I was surrounded by many wealthy children at university, and I realized how I did not want my children to be like them. I wanted them to be raised with the middle-class values I grew up with," according to benzinga.
Melinda adopted a precise approach to ensure her children's privacy in elementary school by having them use her maiden name, "French," and delaying their father’s arrival at school so that their classmates would not notice their connection to him.
Phoebe pointed out that the goal was not just to hide their identity, but to give them the chance to be themselves before others knew them as the children of billionaire Bill Gates.
She said, "Before people knew we were the Gates family, it was better not to be in the spotlight as a child."
Melinda added that this approach extended to allowing each child to choose their name when they reached maturity. Phoebe chose to use the surname Gates when she felt ready to do so, while her brother opted to use the surname French until the end of high school.
This revelation comes at a time when Bill Gates still lives in his enormous mansion on Lake Washington known as "Xanadu 2.0," with a size of 66,000 square feet, which includes six kitchens, 24 bathrooms, an indoor swimming pool, and a trampoline room, emphasizing that he does not plan to downsize the house and enjoys it with his children.
For Melinda and Gates, the goal of the name-hiding policy was not just to protect privacy, but an educational philosophy to teach their children to rely on themselves first, without the reputation of the name controlling their early lives.
