Jennifer Lopez Reveals In 2003 Interview That She Never Wanted To Be Called JLo (EXCLUSIVE)

Jennifer Lopez wasn’t always known as JLo.

Access Hollywood’s podcast “The Vault” unearthed an exclusive interview with the pop superstar back in 2003 where she revealed the origins of her iconic nickname, and it didn’t exactly happen as we may have all thought.

“I did come up with JLo,” she laughed in the 2003 interview with Access Hollywood. “I didn’t come up with it by myself, I should take that back. People would call me, Jennifer Lo or Jenny Lo,” she added.

“I was just naming my album and I said, ‘What am I going to call my album?’ and I had all these like super pretentious names about passion and art and I was like, ‘This is not right for this album. So I was like what is this, what is the essence of it. It’s a combination of who I am, which is Bronx and urban and a combination of the music, which is Latin and pop and hip hop — and that meld made me go toward that name.”

Jennifer explained that her fans were also a major contributing factor to the nickname.

“The fans kind of name you something, they pick it for you and they really did pick that for me, they’re like you are JennyLo, you’re JLo and I just decided to name the album that and it caught on,” she continued.

Now, 18 years later, the “Pati” singer is still largely known by JLo. And although she admitted that the nickname doesn’t bother her, it’s still a bit of a surprise because it’s not her actual name and she never really intended to go by that moniker full-time.

“It’s funny, not that I’m sick of it, it’s not my name, you know what I mean. It caught on and it’s so catchy and people call me JLo all the time, so it’s like you can call me Jennifer or you call my Jenny or you can call me Jen,” she said in the throwback interview. “I don’t care, you can call me anything that you want. You can call me JLo if you want but it’s not my name.”

“I wasn’t like, I want to be called JLo, the name of the album was JLo,” she added.

But perhaps the JLo nickname had another reason for its lasting power. Jennifer’s 2001 album “J.Lo” dropped the same week as her film “The Wedding Planner,” which opened at number one at the box office. Her album went on to become certified quadruple platinum in the U.S. and she became one of the first entertainers to have a number one album and film get released simultaneously.

“The Vault” by Access Hollywood’s podcast episode this week features uncovered interviews from Jennifer’s early years, following her rise from a dancer on “In Living Color” to music and film icon through.

List below, to hear Jennifer admit that she had butterflies about releasing her first album back in 1999 and more!