Tyler, the Creator Wants to Embrace his “Strong African Last Name”

Inspired by Virgil Abloh, Tyler, the Creator is learning to embrace his “strong African last name.”

“ABLOH. That strong African last name. few years back I started using more of my African last name OKONMA because of how real Virgil’s felt,” Tyler wrote on Instagram in November after Abloh’s death, explaining how the iconic fashion designer helped him find confidence in the origins of his name.

“My full name, Tyler Okonma, in all caps, just looks really cool,” the Grammy-winner said in a recent interview. “So you might see more of that, I don’t know. I’m getting older, and I think when people get older, they start realizing s— and liking things they didn’t like. You just start changing. So I think my version of that is looking at my name and saying, ‘Oh, this is actually cool.’”

“Tyler, the Creator,” the stage name he’s known by, came from a Myspace page he made when he was 13. 

“I’m 17, in high school, and around L.A., that name’s getting around, and I kind of just kept it as my stage name,” he explained. “It’s really dumb, but it stuck with me, so it just works.”

But now, Okonma may work even better for the rapper.

“I didn’t know anyone else that had a name similar to it,” Tyler said of his childhood. “I always thought my last name was weird, but whatever. I started f—ing with it more around 2016, and then I started putting it on my album covers… I think I’mma keep that going. I really f— with that name now.”

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Photo credit: Ovidiu Hrubaru / Shutterstock.com