The Weeknd Changes Name

The Weeknd has said goodbye to his stage name, and started going by his birth name again on social media.

His usernames still appear as 'theweeknd' however, his display name now says Abel Tesfaye.

This comes one week after he admitted to considering the retirement of his stage name after over a decade of performing using it.

“I’m going through a cathartic path right now. It’s getting to a place and time where I’m getting ready to close The Weeknd chapter.”

He has explained that he has said "everything I can say" as The Weeknd and he's ready to move on.

He has had major success on the music charts with five studio albums and multiple hits such as, 'Blinding Lights,' 'Starboy,' and 'I Feel It Coming.'

April 2023 saw him as the first artist in Spotify history to hit 100 million monthly listeners.

He admitted the current album he's "working on now" will likely be his "last hurrah" as The Weeknd.

His name change comes one month after he asked his millions of Twitter followers if he should give his birth name a run. Most didn't believe him.

“ABEL formally known as The Weeknd?” he tweeted on April 4th.

Some of his followers responded with:

“What? Are you going to change it to theweekdys now or something?”

“Weeknd are you trying to get out [of] your record contract or something lol?”

His stage name comes from his college days where he dropped out, taking his mattress with him, basically leaving "one weekend."

He then dropped the ‘e’ in ‘weekend’ to avoid trademark issues with an existing band of the same name.

“I left home when I was about 17, dropped out of high school and convinced Lamar [XO crew member] to do the same. We grabbed our mattresses from our parents threw it in our friends sh**ty van and left one weekend and never came back home.

“I hated my name at the time though so I tried it as a stage name. It sounded cool. I took out the ‘e’ because there was already a Canadian band named The Weekend.”