Tesfaye attended West Hill Collegiate Institute and Birchmount Park Collegiate Institute in Scarborough, Toronto. At age 17 he got kicked out halfway into his junior year while at West Hill and transferred to Birchmount Park. He dropped out in 2007, six months after transferring schools. Tesfaye also left his home shortly after that and moved into a small apartment in the Parkdale neighborhood of Toronto, along with some friends. Tesfaye has credited his stage name as being inspired by his high school dropout status, saying he "left one weekend and never came back home", although producer Jeremy Rose claims the name was his idea. The spelling was modified in order to avoid trademark issues with the Canadian band The Weekend. He also said that his stage name was going to be the title of his mixtape, "."