Rapper and fashion designer Kanye West filed court documents on Tuesday to legally change his name—or rather, shorten it.
The filing with the L.A. County Superior Court said West, 44, wished to swap his full name, Kanye Omari West, for "Ye," a nickname popular with fans. No middle name, no last name—the star requested that he be known solely by the two-letter mononym, in the vein of one-name name artists like Madonna and Prince.
West reportedly petitioned the court on the basis that the name change was for "personal reasons." He gave no other explanation.
In a 2018 radio interview, West explained the name's appeal. "I believe 'Ye' is the most commonly used word in the Bible," he said. "And in the Bible it means you. So I'm you, I'm us, it's us."
Andrew Lawrence, a biblical scholar at Bluefield College in Virginia, determined in 2016 that the most common word in the Bible (excluding prepositions like "the," "and" and "a") is "Lord."
A superior court judge must sign off on West's petition before the name change is official. In California, the process of petitioning a change of name can take up to three months.
California law theoretically allows for mononymic name changes. The only limitations on legally changing one's name in the state involve doing so to avoid creditors; affecting the publicity rights of another person (if West decided to change his name to Justin Bieber, for example); incorporating profanity, obscenity or a racial slur into the name; or changes that would deliberately cause administrative confusion, such as placing a number or punctuation mark in the middle of a name.
California has granted one-word name changes to celebrities before. In 1979, Cherilyn Sarkisian La Piere Bono Allman became recognized by the state simply as "Cher."
Beverly Hills entertainment attorney David Pierce told KNX West's name change, if approved, won't have much effect on his outstanding record and fashion line deals.
"If you're under contract with a label to perform, let's say seven albums, you can't get out of that with a name change," he said. "Everybody and their brother would do that, if that were the case."
