Russian Model Irina Shayk Changed Name to Launch US Career, Reports Reveal

Shaykholislamova, which means "Sheikh/Head of Islam" in Russian, is Irina Shayk’s real surname. In 2004, the young woman was crowned Miss Chelyabinsk, the provincial capital. She receives an invitation from a modeling agency based in Moscow, 1,700 kilometers from this capital. She is then sent to London to improve her English, reports Le Monde.

Her wish was to obtain a visa for the United States. All her attempts had failed. She could not find any explanation for this. The young top model finally realized that her surname, "Head of Islam", was the cause. At the time, there was a "global war on terror", where some people lived in anti-Muslim paranoia.

She then erases the Islam from her first name. From now on, she bears the surname Shayk. She finally gets her visa and settles in the United States. This is the beginning of a promising career. In 2007, she poses lightly dressed, playing the cowgirl in an Arizona ranch for the popular Sports Illustrated Swimsuit magazine. After four years of professional life, she makes the cover of this American magazine. She imposes herself in her field. She signs several contracts. Irina Shayk becomes a famous top model.

Born in 1986, during the last years of the USSR, in the small town of Yemanzhelinsk, in the far south of the Ural mountain range and near Kazakhstan, the muse of Intimissimi and Jean-Paul Gaultier owes the exoticism of her charm to her Tatar origins. "My father had dark skin because he was Tatar. The Tatars sometimes look Brazilian. But I get my light eyes from my mother," she confides. Her mother Olga is a Russian music teacher.