{"id":387670,"date":"2026-04-08T06:58:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-08T06:58:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/387670\/"},"modified":"2026-04-08T06:58:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-08T06:58:10","slug":"suga-of-bts-shocks-bandmates-with-a-secret-behind-his-name","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/387670\/","title":{"rendered":"Suga of BTS Shocks Bandmates with a Secret Behind His Name"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

For over a decade, we believed that we knew the origin of Min Yoongi\u2019s stage name Suga: the \u201cShooting Guard\u201d theory. As the story went, the name \u201cSuga\u201d was a catchy shortened version of his favorite basketball position, Shooting Guard. In Korean, the first syllables of \u201cShooting\u201d (\uc288\/Syu) and \u201cGuard\u201d (\uac00\/Ga) were combined to create his iconic stage name. It became a narrative so solid that even the other BTS<\/a> members \u2014 Jin,\u00a0J-Hope,\u00a0RM,\u00a0Jimin,\u00a0V, and\u00a0Jungkook \u2014 repeated it in interviews for years. But during a recent interview with Wired<\/a>, Suga finally admitted that the basketball story was essentially a \u201ccover\u201d because the real explanation was too much of a chore to clarify every time. And so he didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

During the Q&A, Suga revealed a completely different backstory when asked about the meaning of his name. He said that it was inspired by the legendary American boxer Sugar Ray Leonard. He further explained that in combat sports, fighters with brilliant striking skills are often nicknamed \u201cSuga,\u201d a moniker also used by UFC stars like Sean O\u2019Malley. Hence, the name was actually chosen to match the\u00a0sharp, technical precision\u00a0Suga brings to his rap flows.<\/p>\n

The person behind this branding was Bang Si-hyuk, the founder of HYBE and BTS. An ardent fan of boxing himself, Bang felt that \u201cSuga\u201d was the perfect fit for a rapper whose flow was as calculated and impactful as a pro striker. While Suga liked the name, he understood that explaining the real story to everyone every time would just be a lot to explain, so he kept it to himself and went with the more watered-down basketball story instead.<\/p>\n

The truth surprised everyone, with his band members admitting that, just like the fans, they were hearing this backstory for the first time. V even jokingly questioned if Suga was just making up a cool new story, but the rapper insisted that the boxing connection was the original narrative all along.<\/p>\n

This interesting anecdote comes as BTS dominates the charts. Their new album,\u00a0Arirang<\/a>, has already spent two weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200\u00a0(no other K-pop act has ever held this\u00a0position for two consecutive weeks\u00a0until now), and the group is now gearing up for their massive world tour,\u00a0kicking off in South Korea on April 9.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For over a decade, we believed that we knew the origin of Min Yoongi\u2019s stage name Suga: the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":387671,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[172201,6432,157977,172202,93,61,60,6521,172203,172204,278,541,88276],"class_list":{"0":"post-387670","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-agust-d","9":"tag-bts","10":"tag-bts-arirang","11":"tag-bts-suga","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-ie","14":"tag-ireland","15":"tag-k-pop","16":"tag-k-pop-boy-group","17":"tag-min-yoongi","18":"tag-music","19":"tag-south-korea","20":"tag-suga"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=387670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/387670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/387671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=387670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=387670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=387670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}