New 'Dexter' Star Mos Def Changing His Name

I was wondering when this was going to happen: rapper/actor Mos Def, whose acting career has recently seen a bit of a leap as he's set to star in the upcoming season of "Dexter," will no longer be going by the name Mos Def.

There seems to always come a time in an actor's career, when they have come from another avenue such as rap or wrestling, that their colorful moniker has to go. We've seen The Rock go to Dwayne Johnson, and we've seen Puff Daddy go to...wait, what's Puff Daddy's current name again?

But Mos Def isn't going back to his birth name, Dante Terrell Smith (which, if you ask me, is a pretty cool name, minus the Smith).

Instead, he has decided on Yasiin. Just Yasiin.

"I’m retiring the Mos Def name after 2011," he told MTV.

"I’m actually doing it. Yasiin. That’s it. Mos Def is a name that I built and cultivated over the years, it’s a name that the streets taught me, a figure of speech that was given to me by the culture and by my environment, and I feel I’ve done quite a bit with that name and it’s time to expand and move on. Also, I didn’t want to have to deal with having any moniker or separation between the self that I see and know myself as."

Mos Def's spelling of Yasiin is a bit different from the usual spellings: Yasin, Yassin or Yaseen. The name is a relatively common masculine name meaning "rich" in Arabic and "protector of fame" in Hindu. My guess is that he's going for the latter. Or maybe both.

Hey, as long as he doesn't go the Diddy route and change his name 50 times, I'm cool with it. It was starting to get a little awkward, referring to him as Mos Def all the time. What do you call him for short? Mos? Mr. Def?

See you in a few weeks on "Dexter," Yasiin!