How to Handle Living up to — or Living Down — Your Family Name, Especially When It's Jenner

Brandon Jenner used to stand proud to represent his family name. Nowadays, though, he's a little bit less excited to say he's a Jenner.

“Things have changed for me a lot,” he admitted on Let’s Go There With Shira & Ryan (reported by Us Weekly). “Just the rise of Keeping Up With the Kardashians has changed the idea of what the last name Jenner, you know, what kind of person I’m going to be.”

Brandon said he used to get admiration for his family.

"When I was a kid, I would hand my driver’s license, or my ID, when I was younger, and somebody would look at it and say, ‘Oh, are you Bruce Jenner’s kid?’ and they would want to shake my hand … It was this real sense of pride,” he told the radio hosts.

One way Brandon has distanced himself from the family name is to drop it altogether, as he did when he was in the music group Brandon & Leah with his ex-wife Leah Felder. But it still always comes out, and he says it's hurt his music career.

“When people hear it for the first time, or they hear my last name, ‘Jenner,’ I think that they’re quicker to write me off and not necessarily even want to give my music a chance because of it,” he revealed. “I sometimes am almost a little ashamed of it, because I feel like people are going to have this preconceived notion that I’m just, kind of, like a spoiled kid that doesn’t really have anything to say, right? And hasn’t struggled in their life.”

There have been struggles, he insists.

“I’ve struggled just like a lot of other people in different ways, on an emotional level," he added.