Tenille Dashwood, better known to WWE fans as Emma recently appeared on Taylor Wilde’s ‘Wilde On’ podcast where she revealed the story behind her ring name in the company.
The female star signed a contract with the company in 2011 and made her debut for the FCW brand right before its rebranding as the NXT in August 2012.
Talking about her ring name, Dashwood discussed how the company did not allow people to use their real names at the time. So the officials asked her to give a list of suggestions for her ring name:
“So, when I first started, they said ‘give me a list of names’ and I remember I gave a list of like 20 names or something and they were like two-part names too,
like I had a last name but they just went ahead and went ‘out of all of these, we’ll just take this name but without that…so, just Emma,’ and I was like oh, okay.”
Tenille Dashwood continued her story mentioning how the officials had finalised two names from the list and she chose the one which felt catchy to her:
“Well, they came back with two options, it was like Emma or like Adeline was the other one and I thought, Adeline? What is that?
I guess it’s a nice name but it’s not like catchy, it’s not easy to say, Adeline is easy to forget and Emma is simple, everyone will be able to say it,”
Dashwood made her main roster debut in 2014 as Emma, making her the first Australian woman to debut on WWE TV. At a time it was said that the company had big plans for her character.
However, Emma was sent back to NXT in 2015. While she did return to the main roster in 2016, she didn’t stay in the company very long after that. She was released from the promotion in October 2017.
