Queen Naija, whose legal name is that of her stage name, has revealed she’s considering a name change due to many people believing the “Karma” singer is calling herself the Queen of Nigeria.
In a now-deleted tweet, the 25-year-old wrote, “I think I wanna legally change the spelling of my middle name ‘Naija’ to ‘Najah’ cause so many people think I’m calling myself the Queen of Nigeria.”
In fact, her middle name, Naija, has several meanings across different languages, and according to several reports, means wisdom or daughter of wisdom. Queen Naija’s mother is of African-American and Italian descent, and her father, who she admits she does not know, is Arab.
Several commenters assumed the singer was trolling while other fans felt the announcement was abrupt and stemmed from something internal. However, she’s been heavily weighing a name change for quite some time.
When speaking on the origin of her name during a 2018 interview, the Michigan native stated that her mother named her Queen Naija because “she said it’d be a good stage name because she knew I was gonna be a star.” She revealed that Queen came from her grandmother and Naija stemmed from her father.
Due to people constantly mispronouncing and misspelling her moniker, the mother of two explained that she’s considered changing her middle name “a lot of times,” but feels it would be “disrespectful” to her parents.
What name would she use if she did decide to take the leap? Simple: Queen. Or not so simple: Queen B because her last name is Bulls, but in her own words, “That’s so typical.” So it seems, for now, the talented singer remains Queen Naija.
Check out an interview where Queen Naija discusses her unique name and ethnicity below: