Singer Alicia Keys performs on BET's 106 & Park show in BET studios, in this Oct. 9, 2007, file photo in New York. [Agencies]

If it weren't for her mother, Alicia Keys might have a radically different image. Keys, who has a new album titled "As I Am," says that when she was trying to choose a professional name she went through a dictionary and stopped on the word "wild."

She tells Newsweek in the magazine's Nov. 19 issue that she asked her mother how Alicia Wild sounded to her.

"She said "It sounds like you're a stripper,'" Keys said.

After that, she decided to use Keys.

"It's like the piano keys. And it can open so many doors," said the singer born Alicia Augello-Cook.