If you follow rap or pop culture at all you have undoubtedly heard of Kanye West, but he officially will no longer be going by that name.
Kanye West has been trying for a while to switch his name legally to ‘Ye’ and he has officially been granted permission to do so by a Los Angeles judge. Judge Michelle Williams granted West permission to change his name after many years of attempting to do so. Kanye Omari West is now just Ye. He no longer has a middle or last name.
Kanye, a famous rapper from Atlanta, GA, started to give his fans an idea that he wanted to undergo a name change in 2018 when he tweeted, “the being formally known as Kanye West. I am Ye.” Many fans were curious about this tweet and why he would want to legally change his name from Kanye West, a name that has become so familiar to many, to just Ye. After posting that tweet he told radio host Big Boy in an interview that, “I believe ‘ye’ is the most commonly used word in the Bible, and in the Bible, it means you. So, it’s I’m you, I’m us, it’s us.”
Despite wanting to change his name for years, he did not officially submit his paperwork for a legal name change until August of this year. When he submitted that paperwork he cited “personal reasons” as the cause for a name change. While he did not elaborate on his personal reasons for wanting a name change, he has used Ye as a nickname for a long time and even has an album, that was released in 2018, titled “Ye.”
His name change is only one major life change he has made recently. He also filed divorce papers with wife Kim Kardashian West back in February of this year. Despite Kanye’s name change and the filing for divorce, Kim Kardashian West notably has not changed her name yet and has opted to keep West as a last name.
Kanye is not the first major artist to change his name and he certainly will not be the last. Artists such as Snoop Dogg, who changed his name from Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr., have already changed their names. Some artists, such as Sean Combs, have changed their names multiple times already and it is not unlikely that Kanye will also have multiple name changes at some point during his career.
While Kayne changing his name to Ye might be controversial to some, it is a much better decision than switching it to “Christian Genius Billionaire Kanye West,” which he told a crowd in New York he was planning on doing in 2019.