How A Hero Changed Colin Powell's Name

WASHINGTON - Colin Powell says World War II changed his name, or at least how he pronounces it.

"Before, I was Cah-lin, the British pronunciation that Jamaicans used," Powell writes in his memoir, "My American Journey," released in bookstores today.

But one of the first American heroes of the war was Colin P. Kelly Jr., pronounced "Coh-lin." Kelly was an Air Corps flier who attacked the Japanese battleship Haruna two days after Pearl Harbor and won the Distinguished Service Cross posthumously.

"Colin Kelly's name was on every boy's lips, and so, to my friends, I became Coh-lin of Kelly Street," Powell writes. "To my family, I remain Cah-lin to this day."

Powell said he once asked his father whether he was named "for some illustrious ancestor."

"Pop said no, he had read it off a shipping ticket the day I was

born."