Is SZA’s stage name inspired by RZA and GZA?
When she first emerged on the scene, it didn’t go unnoticed how similar SZA’s stage name was to those of two of the Wu-Tang Clan’s founding members. So did she select her name as a tribute to RZA and GZA? In a sense, yes, but her decision runs much deeper than a Wu-Tang tribute alone. It comes down to her faith.
SZA is aligned with the Nation of Islam, a religious group founded in the United States that advocates for black nationalism and has influenced the formation of other groups like the Five-Percent Nation, to which RZA and GZA have been associated. It considers itself to be an Islamic movement, although scholars tend to consider it as different to more orthodox Islamic traditions.
SZA’s nickname when she was younger was Sos, derived from her actual name Solána. But, as she explained to Genius in 2017, this was a problem, because it was too close to “Sosa,” which is Chief Keef’s nickname. By the time SZA was trying to make it in music, he really owned it.
“Sos comes from Sosa,” she said. “Nobody could call me that at the time, Chief Keef was blazing in the streets. It was weird for me to also be Sosa.”
With “Sos” out of the running, the young musician leant on her background with the Nation of Islam for help. “SZA just kind of arrived at me,” she said, “and the Supreme Alphabet and everything else that it meant.”
The name “SZA,” as she mentioned, came to her from the Supreme Alphabet, a linguistic system associated with the Five-Percent Nation that assigns specific meanings to the letters of the Latin script we use in English. So, for example, the latter “a” stands for “Allah.”
RZA and GZA adopted their names through the Supreme Alphabet, with RZA’s name, in the context of the code, meaning “Ruler Zig-Zag-Zig Allah.” GZA’s name, meanwhile, means “Genius Zig-Zag-Zig Allah.” The “Z,” or “Zig-Zag-Zig,” can further be understood to mean “knowledge, wisdom, and understanding.”
SZA adopted the “Z” and “A,” like the Wu-Tang pair before her, but for the first letter she selected “S,” which, as she explained to Complex, typically stands for “saviour,” but which she prefers to use as “sovereign.”
“SZA is from the Supreme Alphabet,” she confirmed. “Like, the RZA is ‘Rulers, Zig-zag, Allah.’ You have rulers like sovereignty over one’s self and the world around you. ‘S’ in the supreme alphabet stands for ‘savior’ but that didn’t sit right with me so I switched it to either ‘sovereign’ or ‘savior,’ however you feel.”