At the age of 14, Erykah was freestyling for a local radio station alongside such talents as Roy Hargrove. In her youth, she had decided to change the spelling of her first name from Erica to Erykah, as she believed her original name was a "slave name." The term 'kah' identifies one's inner self. She adopted the surname of "Badu" because it was her favorite jazz scat-singing sound; also, among the Akan people in Ghana, it is the term for the tenth-born child.