Chris or Krist? Why Krist Novoselic Changed the Spelling of His Name

If you have seen “Chris Novoselic” in an old article or a CD booklet and wondered whether it is the same person as Krist Novoselic, it is. It is the same Nirvana bassist, spelled two ways. “Chris” is the Americanized spelling he used in the band’s early years, and “Krist” is the spelling his Croatian-born parents gave him at birth. By his own account he went back to “Krist” because people kept asking about the name on his passport, and a newspaper reported in January 1994 that he had made the switch “last year,” meaning 1993.

The short answer

• His name is Krist. Asked in 2008 whether it is correct to call him Krist or Chris, he answered: “I’m Krist, with a t” (Washington State Legacy Project oral history).
• Why “Chris” at all? In his words: “I actually used to kind of anglicize my name. I went by Chris for a while,” he said (Washington State Legacy Project oral history).
• Why back to “Krist”? He says he changed back “after I got my passport and started touring with Nirvana, and people would look at my passport and be like, ‘That’s your name? Why don’t you just go back to that? It’s kind of cool.’ So I just decided to do that” (Washington State Legacy Project oral history).
• When? The Seattle Post-Intelligencer wrote in January 1994: “Last year, Novoselic began spelling his first name ‘Krist,’ instead of the Americanized ‘Chris.’ Krist was the name Novoselic’s Croatian-born parents gave him at birth” (Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Jan. 7, 1994). The album credits fit that (see the table below): “Chris” through Nevermind and Incesticide, “Krist” from In Utero.

Where the name comes from

Krist told the Washington State Legacy Project that his name is “an old Croatian name,” spelled K-r-s-t-e (he says it is pronounced roughly “Kirsta”), or Krsto, “which actually means christened or blessed.” His father and a great-uncle had the same name, and his father was known as Kristo (Washington State Legacy Project oral history).

There was a catch. Croatian and other Slavic languages can do without vowels in places, and Krist said that Krste, said the Croatian way, would have sounded to English-speaking ears like “cursed.” So his parents “put an ‘i’ in there and made it Krist, which is a form of Chris” (Washington State Legacy Project oral history). The surname is just as meaningful: Krist says “novo” means new and “selo” means village, so Novoselic translates as “new villager” or “newcomer” (Washington State Legacy Project oral history). He made the same point in SPIN in 1993, adding that the Novoselics’ roots on the island of Iž go back to the mid-1700s, “even living in the same house, so I guess we’re not newcomers after all” (SPIN, May 1993).

How it appears in Nirvana credits

Here is how his first name is credited on Nirvana’s main releases. Credits come from the release data on Discogs, which transcribes liner notes, and from a liner-note transcription for Nevermind. We have not seen every booklet ourselves, so treat the table as well-sourced but not first-hand.

Release	Year	First name as credited	Source
“Love Buzz” / “Big Cheese” (Sub Pop single)	1988	Chris	Discogs
Bleach	1989	Chris	Discogs
“Sliver” (single)	1990	Chris	Discogs
Nevermind	1991	Chris (“Chris Novoselic: Bass/Vocals”)	Album Liner Notes; Discogs
Incesticide	1992 (Dec.)	Chris (songwriting credits)	Discogs
In Utero	1993	Krist	Discogs
MTV Unplugged in New York	1994	Krist	Discogs

That puts the change in 1993, not 1992. The timing lines up with his 1993 trip to Croatia for SPIN. That trip is a plausible reason for the timing, but he does not say so himself, so we are not claiming it (SPIN, May 1993; Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Jan. 7, 1994).

How to pronounce Krist Novoselic

• Krist is spelled with a t. The “Kirsta” pronunciation he mentions belongs to the older Croatian form, Krste, not to the spelling he uses today (Washington State Legacy Project oral history).
• Novoselic: Krist says the original Croatian pronunciation is roughly “No-VOSS-o-litch,” and that he says “Novo-SELL-itch,” “the easier American pronunciation” (Washington State Legacy Project oral history).
• Spelling note: in Croatian the surname is written Novoselić, with an accent on the c. Some outlets, such as the Seattle Times, use that form, but Nirvana’s albums, and this site, use Novoselic.

Krist’s family background

Krist was born on May 16, 1965, in Compton, California, to Croatian immigrants. Croatian was his first language (Washington State Legacy Project oral history). The details below come from his own oral history unless noted.

• Father: Kristo, who came from the village of Veli Iž on the island of Iž, off the coast near Zadar in Dalmatia. Krist says his dad looked up the village church records and found a Novoselic from around 1770.
• Mother: Marija (née Mustać), from the village of Privlaka, north of Zadar. (In the transcript the village is spelled “Prizlaka.” We use the standard spelling, which Wikipedia also gives.)
• Siblings: a younger brother, Robert, who introduced Krist to Kurt Cobain, and a younger sister, Diana (LiveNirvana Who’s Who).
• Moves: the family lived in Compton, then in the Croatian neighborhood of San Pedro in Los Angeles, then moved to Aberdeen, Washington in 1979. In 1980, at 15, Krist went to live with an aunt in Zadar for about a year, Croatia, then part of Yugoslavia.

More on his early years is on our Younger Years page, and the band’s story is on Krist in Nirvana. His politics are on Krist and Politics.

What we could not verify

• The exact date of the switch. The Seattle P-I places it in 1993, and the album credits fit, but we have not found Krist giving a month or an occasion.
• Booklet credits first-hand. The “Chris” and “Krist” credits above come from Discogs and a liner-note transcription, not our own copies. Incesticide’s “Chris” appears only in its songwriting credits on Discogs.
• The story that a clerk misspelled the family surname. Wikipedia says the original surname was Novaselić and that a clerk changed it to Novoselic when Krist’s father applied for a passport, citing a Croatian newspaper (Zadarski list). We could not open that article, and Krist does not say this in the oral history, so we left it out of the body of this page.
• Whether the passport story is the whole reason. It is Krist’s own explanation, and we have no other.

Know of a source that dates the change more exactly? Contact the webmaster.

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Last updated November 2026.

Sources: Krist Novoselic: Of Grunge and Grange, Washington State Legacy Project oral history (2008), Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Jan. 7, 1994 (via LiveNirvana), Krist Novoselic, “Masters of War,” SPIN, May 1993, LiveNirvana Who’s Who, Album Liner Notes: Nevermind, Discogs, Wikipedia.