What Does U.A Stand for in My Hero Academia?

My Hero Academia’s most iconic hero school is often called U.A, and even if you’re a massive fan of anime you might not know why. Well, so you can finally put this question to rest, here’s what the name U.A actually means in My Hero Academia.

What Does U.A Mean in My Hero Academia?

In My Hero Academia, U.A is the name given to the Yuuei High School that heroes attend as children to hone their skills. This was chosen as a play on words because the Kanji for Yuuei flipped means Hero, and as you might have noticed the word sounds very similar to U.A.

The Kanji for Yuuei are as follows: 雄 英. By flipping these two symbols you get the Kanji for Hero (英雄) and this is why Kohei Horikoshi chose to use the name for the Hero Academy in his manga, as pointed out by one Quora user.

This translation gives us full confirmation that the name is not an acronym despite much speculation suggesting that it stood for United Academy. No, there are no words attached to these two letters, instead, it is the sounds of the Kanji.

Funnily enough, you will see the U.A stare you right in the face multiple times when watching My Hero Academia. Most often when the students are in their sports outfits which literally have the two English letters stacked on top of each other stitched into their design.

Of course, there are other academies in My Hero Academia so using U.A as the name makes it easy to differentiate Yuuei High School from the others. Unfortunately, none of the other schools have a name as interesting as this one, but that shouldn’t be any surprise given this is where most of the action goes down.