Kanye West has legally changed his name - and it's a lot shorter now

Kanye West has legally changed his name to Ye after a Los Angeles court approved his application.

In August, the rapper formally requested to change his name to Ye (pronounced "yay") after filing legal documents - citing "personal reasons" for the name change.

He has now successfully dropped his full name - Kanye Omari West - in favour of this long-time two-letter moniker.

The 44-year-old first alluded to his plans to change his name to Ye when he tweeted: "Formally known as Kanye West. I am YE."

His application has been officially approved by LA Superior Court Judge Michelle Williams, and he will no longer have a middle or last name.

In 2018, the rapper told radio host Big Boy, "I believe 'ye' is the most commonly used word in the Bible. In the Bible it means you.

"So, I'm you. And I'm us. It's us. It went from being Kanye, which means the only one, to just Ye, just being a reflection of our good, our bad, our confused - everything. It's more of a reflection of who we are [as] beings."

His eighth studio album in 2018 was called Ye and the name has been present on his Twitter handle for some time.

In August, his long-awaited 10th studio album Donda was finally released after several delays.

The 27-track album is 108 minutes long and is named after his late mother.

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The rapper is in the midst of a divorce from reality television star Kim Kardashian West, whom he married in 2014. They share four children: seven-year-old North, five-year-old Saint, three-year-old Chicago, and two-year-old Psalm.

West did not ask that his estranged wife's name be changed back to just Kardashian when she filed to split from him in February.