The Weeknd name spelling: How did the Super Bowl halftime singer get his stage name?
The Weeknd is set to perform at the 2021 Super Bowl halftime show, and viewers may be curious as to why there’s no second e in the singer’s name.
While his name is pronounced like the Saturday to Sunday break, there is no second e in the spelling. In fact, if you’re looking at his name closely, you may not even recognize the fact it’s missing an e. Either that, or you think it’s being misspelled constantly.
But there’s a good reason why it’s spelled differently, as the singer revealed back in 2013. We’ll get into why below.
The Weeknd name origin
The Weeknd’s name is spelled without a second e, or not spelled like The Weekend, due to copyright reasons. While The Weeknd is immensely famous now, he wasn’t back when he chose his name. When he decided to be called The Weekend, there was already a band in Canada called that. But since he was already going by The Weekend, he simply decided to keep the name, and just drop the second e to avoid any issues.
The Weeknd revealed all of this information in a Reddit AMA.
His full response, and the origin behind the name, can be seen here:
I left home when I was about 17 dropped out of high school and convinced Lamar to do the same lol. We grabbed our mattresses from our parents threw it in our friends shitty van and left one weekend and never came back home. It was gonna be the title of HOB. 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 (copyright issues).
As for the band The Weekend, well they’re still around. But their Wikipedia page is much shorter than The Weeknd’s.
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The Weeknd’s real name
The Weeknd’s real name is Abel Tesfaye. As he mentioned in his Reddit AMA, he “hated” his name at the time of him starting his career, so he decided to go by The Weekend. Although due to copyright issues, he had to drop the second e, and he’s been The Weeknd ever since.
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