Who came up with Wu-Tang Clan’s name and what does it mean?
Wu-Tang Clan’s legacy is one of a formidable collective that took over New York during the early 1990s. The nine-piece outfit, in addition to their numerous affiliates, sometimes saw the crew reach over twelve individuals in total.
The Clan had a martial arts-like discipline to them, and this theme ran throughout their music. From their visuals to the titles of their tracks, such as ‘Da Mystery Of Chessboxin’ and ‘Shadowboxin’ / ‘4th Chamber’, their tracks paid homage to Kung-Fu films of the 1970s, with samples from such films appearing throughout their work.
The name Wu-Tang strangely has a long and culturally rich history behind it and, although members of the crew were first introduced to it by a film, that isn’t the true origin of the name. Wu-Tang derives from the Taoist holy mountain “Wu Dang” in China’s northwest Hubei Province.
The mountain range was home to the Purple Imperial City of the Ming Dynasty but also the Wudang School, a fictional martial arts school that appears in a range of important Chinese texts and was described as an academy run by monks. The Wudang School and its rivalry with The Shaolin School was the centre of a 1983 martial arts film from Hong Kong entitled Shaolin and Wu-Tang. RZA and Ol’ Dirty Bastard were Kung-Fu fanatics and loved watching movies about fighting.
Although for years, it has been reported that RZA and ODB were responsible for picking the name in an interview for the 88 YouTube series ‘Good Fortunes’, Ghostface Killah asserted that he was in fact responsible for selecting the name, telling fans, “We grew up with karate flicks in the ‘80s, they used to come on TV every Saturday at three o’clock and then we got stuck on it.”
He continued, “Some liked it more than others. RZA was like the chief of the kung-fu flicks. [He knows] All the names and all that stuff. There was one movie called Shaolin and Wu-Tang that I had, and then I played it for RZA ‘cause he lived in projects, and he just fell in love with it. From there, he wanted to start a rap group called Wu-Tang, so I presented him with the name, and he just incorporated it.”
After creating the collective’s name, the members created backronyms and decided what each letter of Wu-Tang stood for. Early backronyms for the group’s moniker reportedly included: “We Usually Take All N—as’ Garments,” “Witty Unpredictable Talent And Natural Game”, and “Wisdom of the Universe, and the Truth of Allah for the Nation of the Gods.”