Prateik Smita Patil has changed his last name many times in the last decade. A few weeks ago, he had revealed in public that he has chosen to go with the name Prateik Smita Patil after discussing with his wife, Priya Banerjee. 

In a recent interview, Prateik Smita Patil revealed a custody battle ensued after his birth between his father Raj Babbar and Smita Patil’s family to decide upon his last name. Smita Patil died soon after his birth.

In a video shared on Varinder Chawla’s YouTube channel, Prateik shared, “I was born Prateik. There was a custody battle for me from my mom’s side of the family and my father’s side of the family. My mom’s side won. There was still a battle for the surname. Finally, in the passport, it was ‘Prateik Smit Babbar’. 

“It wasn’t even Smita, so growing up I was ‘Prateik Smit Babbar’. In school, everyone thought I was Christian because they would wonder ‘why Smit?’, no one cared for Babbar. Everyone just called me Smit.”

Prateik made a lasting impression in his debut film Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na. In that film,  he was credited as ‘Prateik Babbar’ but subsequently, he went with just ‘Prateik’ for a few years. 

“In my first film, my name was Prateik Babbar and then the devil got the better of me and I started thinking ‘Kaun hai maa? Kaun hai baap? (Who is mom? Who is dad?)’ Then I started thinking, ‘I don’t want to be Patil, I don’t want to be Babbar. I want to be just Prateik.’ For a few films, I was only Prateik because I was bitter about my parents. I was like, I don’t want to belong to them. They have only given me trauma my entire life. I don’t want to belong to them and then I continued with Prateik,” he said.

Sharing the thought behind settling with the name Prateik Smita Patil, he said, “I had to embrace that name, it makes me complete. Now, I am complete, I feel complete. Priya said ‘Prateik, you owe it to her, she gave her life for you, you owe that, you are her son’ and that hit different. I was like ‘this is who I have to be’.”

Prateik is known for acting in films like Dhobi Ghat, Baaghi 2, Mulk, Mitron, Chhichhore, to name a few.