A Virginia high school football coach’s fumble helped inspire Shaboozey‘s stage name.
The man had originally misspelled the outlaw country star’s actual surname, which led the artist, born Collins Obinna Chibueze, to adopt Shaboozey as his nickname and later use it as his official alias in the music industry, Billboard reported Oct. 3.
And the coach wasn’t the only one to originally get his last name wrong. The son of Nigerian immigrants, Shaboozey—whose surname means “God is king” in the Igbo language—spoke about his experience attending high school in Woodbridge, Va., a suburb outside of Washington D.C., with a name that many people found difficult to say correctly.
“Hearing your name [mispronounced] during attendance was always a thing,” the “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” singer told Billboard. “You felt like you had to make it easier for everyone else to understand.”
Shaboozey had also reflected on the origin of his stage name in an interview this past summer.
