The Black Label recently teased their new girl group MEOVV (미야오) via Instagram. The video post showed 5 black cats on top of the company’s building indicating that it will be a 5 member group. Yesterday (Wednesday, 21st August), the first member of the upcoming group has officially been announced. Much to everyone’s surprise, it was revealed to be Ella Gross (엘라 메켄지 그로스), who is known as BLACKPINK Jennie’s “little sister” since they look alike.
Many expressed their excitement for the young star who is now starting her journey as an idol. Those who are just finding out about the soon-to-debut idol did more digging to learn more about her but apparently, one information has led to an argument on social media. Here’s what happened:
Ella McKenzie Gross, mononymously known as Ella, started her career in the entertainment industry as a model before she joined The Black Label. She’s been seen hanging out with members of BLACKPINK on multiple occasions and her seniors have nothing but praise for the young singer. After she was revealed as a member of MEOVV, many were curious to know more about her.
It was shared by Pannchoa on Twitter yesterday that her Korean birth name is Nabi (나비) which means Butterfly. However, a Malaysian replied to the post saying, “Nabi means ‘prophet’ in Malay so I don’t know if it’s kind of disrespectful”. As expected, fans came to the 15-year-old’s defence saying that a word or name could have different meanings in different languages.
Many educated the user by giving examples of the word’s meaning in another language – Nabi means ‘Butterfly’ in Korean and ‘Navel’ in Hindi. Others, including other Malaysians, pointed out that Nabi is actually an Arabic word, not Malay and urged the user to delete her post as it puts Malaysia in a bad light.
At the time of writing, the netizen has yet to delete their post. After a quick check, we discovered the controversial reply was actually the Twitter user’s second tweet on their account. So from this, we can deduce that they were probably just trolling to get K-pop fans riled up. Whatever the case, we’d like to congratulate Ella Gross for her upcoming debut! May her career as an idol be as successful as her seniors.
Check out her announcement trailer below:
