Celebrity3 min(s) read
Miley Cyrus is making a huge professional change, which has caught fans off-guard.
The former Disney Channel star is changing her name for good, as per her official website, which was updated overnight.
It was once called mileycyrus.com, but now, it has been changed to mileyofficial.com, though an explanation has not yet been provided.
The 'Flowers' singer may now be looking to be known as just 'Miley', with the website homepage now featuring a red screen with an image of the 33-year-old.
'MILEY' can be seen written in black, bold font on the website, but her social media handles have remained as Miley Cyrus.
Possible explanations have circulated online, with some suggesting that it may have been a decision made following a complicated relationship with her father, country singer Billy Ray Cyrus.
Obviously, the 'Wrecking Ball' artist's last name comes from her father, from whom she had been estranged for a few years.
While the pair starred on Disney Channel hit show Hannah Montana in the 2000s, their relationship was more complicated as adults.
But last year, Miley said they'd mended their relationship in an interview with The New York Times.
She admitted: “As I’ve gotten older, I’m respecting my parents as individuals instead of as parents – because my mom’s really loved my dad for her whole life, and I think being married to someone in the music industry and not being a part of it is obviously really hard.
“I think I took on some of my mom’s hurt as my own because it hurt her more than it hurt me as an adult, and so I owned a lot of her pain," she added.
Miley went on: "Now that my mom is so in love with my stepdad, who I completely adore, and now that my dad, I see him finding happiness, too – I can love them both as individuals instead of as a parental pairing.”
She said that the 'little kid in you reacts' before anything, but you realize that they are simply a person who deserves to be happy when speaking about her father, who is currently dating Elizabeth Hurley.
But according to old interviews, the name change has nothing to do with her father.
Over 10 years ago, the artist admitted that she thought about dropping her family name, telling Notion magazine in 2013: "I was thinking about dropping the Cyrus and just being Miley, but there’s something powerful about the fact that my name now is like a household name.”
Speaking of her years on Disney Channel, she explained: “People have this misconception of me that I’m just one of these kids on TV and that now I go off and party and I’m just this ratchet white girl, and I’m not."
She said that as a young person in LA, she was living 'everyone's dream', adding: "Rather than taking a blessing and making it a curse, it’s just like this is what this name is now."
