Rachel Dolezal who called herself black changes name to West African phrase for 'gift of God'

Rachel Dolezal, the woman who shot to fame when she was discovered to be living as a black woman while actually being white, has now legally changed her name to Nkechi Amare Diallo. Nkechi is short for an Igbo word meaning 'gift of God'.

Igbo is one of the main languages spoken by the Igbo people, one of Africa's largest ethnic groups, indigenous to southern Nigeria. Court documents in Spokane, Washington, where Dolezal was formerly president of the local NAACP chapter before being outed as white, showed that she had changed her name in October.

The New York Daily News reported that a Change.org petition under the name Nkechi Diallo called for Dolezal's TEDx talk from the University of Idaho to be posted online and did not seem to mention that the two could be the same person.

In an interview with the Guardian published over the weekend, Dolezal claimed to be living on food stamps and close to being homeless.

Dolezal lost her position at a local university, as well as her presidency of the Spokane NAACP chapter when a reporter confronted her with a picture of her father - her parents later released pictures of her as a blonde white child.

Dolezal has a memoir entitled 'In Full Color' coming out soon. It was reported that she tweeted saying the story of her name change would be in the book but the tweet appears to have been deleted.