A ring name is a stage name used by a professional wrestler, martial artist, or boxer. While some ring names may have a fictitious first name and surname, others may simply be a nickname, such as The Undertaker.

Ring names were developed as a way to allow wrestling performers to hide their true identities from the wrestling fanbase and thus keep "kayfabe" and allow wrestling performers to hide their true identities from the fans, or because their real name is considered unattractive, dull, amusing for the wrong reasons, or projects the wrong image. Since the advent of the Internet, it is now relatively easy to discover the real name of a wrestler when in the past it was far more difficult. Some examples of ring names are Michael Shawn Hickenbottom to Shawn Michaels, Roderick George Toombs to Roddy Piper, Michael Sean Coulthard to Michael Cole and Chris Irvine to Chris Jericho.

In recent years, however, a growing number of wrestling performers (such as John Cena) have adopted their real name or a variation thereof for their in-ring persona, sometimes modifying the spelling of their real name to better fit their character or gimmick, such as David Bautista to simply Batista, or Richard Fliehr to Ric Flair. Others simply use part of their name, such as Bill Goldberg using his last name, Ken Doane using his first as Kenny, and Mike Mizanin simply using an abbreviation of his name (The) Miz. Many female wrestlers go by their first name only as well. Many also use a nickname in addition to their real name for marketability and other reasons. Some (mostly independent) wrestlers, such as Nigel McGuinness, still go to great lengths to ensure that their real names are not publicly known.

Ring may refer to:

A name is a word or term used for identification. Names can identify a class or category of things, or a single thing, either uniquely, or within a given context. A personal name identifies a specific unique and identifiable individual person, and may or may not include a middle name. The name of a specific entity is sometimes called a proper name (although that term has a philosophical meaning also) and is a proper noun. Other nouns are sometimes, more loosely, called names; an older term for them, now obsolete, is "general names".

The use of personal names is not unique to humans. Dolphins also use symbolic names, as has been shown by recent research. Individual dolphins have distinctive whistles, to which they will respond even when there is no other information to clarify which dolphin is being referred to.

Caution must be exercised when translating, for there are ways that one language may prefer one type of name over another. A feudal naming habit is used sometimes in other languages: the French sometimes refer to Aristotle as "le Stagirite" from one spelling of his place of birth, and English speakers often refer to Shakespeare as "The Bard", recognizing him as a paragon writer of the language. Finally, claims to preference or authority can be refuted: the British did not refer to Louis-Napoleon as Napoleon III during his rule.