What was Che Guevara's real first name?

Ernesto "Che" Guevara (4 June, 1928 – 9 October, 1967) was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, guerrilla leader, diplomat, and military theorist. A major figure of the Cuban Revolution, his stylized visage has become a ubiquitous countercultural symbol of rebellion and global insignia in popular culture.

Ernesto Guevara was born to Ernesto Guevara Lynch and Celia de la Serna y Llosa, on 14 June 1928, in Rosario, Argentina. He was the eldest of five children in an upper-class Argentine family of Spanish (including Basque, Cantabrian) and Irish descent by the ancestor of his mother, Patrick Lynch. Although Guevara's legal name on his birth certificate was "Ernesto Guevara", his name sometimes appears with "de la Serna" and/or "Lynch" accompanying it.

Guevara remains both a revered and reviled historical figure, polarized in the collective imagination in a multitude of biographies, memoirs, essays, documentaries, songs, and films. As a result of his perceived martyrdom, poetic invocations for class struggle, and desire to create the consciousness of a "new man" driven by moral rather than material incentives, Guevara has evolved into a quintessential icon of various leftist movements. In contrast, his ideological critics on the right accuse him of authoritarianism and sanctifying violence against his political opponents.