How Does the Wu-Tang Name Generator Work?

Getty Young Dirty Bastard, RZA, Inspectah Deck and U-God attend the 'Of Mics & Men' premiere.

Wu-Tang Clan is the most famous rap collective of all time. Over the course of two decades, the collective has dominated all facets of popular culture, from music and fashion to film and television. Then there is the Wu-Tang name generator.

For those who are unsure how to use the Wu-Tang name generator, simply click here and punch your name into the window it provides. Once you’ve done that, click “Enter the Wu-Tang” and it will assign you a proper Wu-Tang alias.

The Wu-Tang Name Generator Provides You With a Proper Wu-Tang Alias

The name generator was introduced in 2002, but it gained a spike in popularity in the 2010s, when Donald Glover used it to get his rap name: Childish Gambino. “We were all hanging out, chilling and drinking and then we were like, ‘Oh, Wu-Tang name generator, let’s put our name in,'” Glover said on The Tonight Show. “And we’re putting them all in, and they’re all funny and stuff, and then mine came up and I was like, ‘you guys, it’s not funny anymore. This is something big.’ I just really liked it.”

During a 2016 interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Glover admits that he might not have stuck with it had he known he would be so successful. “If I had known it was going to be something for real, I wouldn’t have used it,” he jokingly said. To further tighten the bonds between Gambino and the Wu-Tang, RZA appeared on his mixtape Royalty.

It Was Used by Donald Glover to Get His Rap Name ‘Childish Gambino’

RZA, who was born Robert Diggs, talked about the influence of Wu-Tang over the years and how they changed the course of hip-hop culture forever. “When I look at the Wu’s inspiration to hip-hop, I think that we’ve always been those guys,” he told Complex. “Whether you roll with us for the whole course, or you jumped out here and there, you could go through our catalog and find that part of daily bread-styled hip-hop is contained within the Wu-dynamic. I think we’ve proven something that may have been overlooked—something even we overlooked, which is the world stage of hip-hop.”

In a separate interview with Billboard, RZA talked about the impact that Chinese culture has had on the Wu-Tang, and where they got their names. “When you think about the Asian culture, it’s one of the few that actually preserved its history in more detail than a lot of other cultures,” he explained. “Their principles of righteousness, physicality, spiritual growth, enlightenment… the poetry, chivalry, swordsmanship, all of those are great qualities for any human, whether you’re Asian, Caucasian, black American, Native American. They’re useful. During my period of development, I had to find those things in Asian culture, because they were buried in other cultures. And it hasn’t been tampered with or diluted. It has a universal message.”