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The University of Arizona will no longer call itself UArizona, ditching an abbreviation it adopted in 2019. But it's not going back to the old nickname, UA—it prefers Arizona as shorthand or, when that causes confusion with the state, the U of A.
When it made the change from UA to UArizona in 2019, the university said the new abbreviation was an attempt to improve search engine optimization. The Arizona Republic noted that the “University of Alabama uses UA. So do Under Armour and United Airlines.”
On Saturday Night Live’s “Weekend Update,” shortly after UArizona’s unveiling, co-anchor Colin Jost said it sounded like a punch line. “Like, ‘if you’ve ever gotten a DUI in a golf cart, you Arizona,’” Jost said.
Now, an update to the Written Style Guide from the university’s marketing and communications arm says that as of July 1, 2024, “‘UArizona’ is officially retired and should no longer be used except in pre-existing instances or social media handles.”
Mitch Zak, a spokesperson for the university, said the term “UArizona” was never used on attire or anything beyond written materials, online references and social media handles. Zak said, “Continued optimization efforts have revealed that the university is best known to students, alums and fans as Arizona and the U of A.”
The guide says U of A “must be written as ‘U of A’ with spaces, and not ‘UofA’ or any other deviation. When ‘U of A’ is used as a noun, it must be referenced as ‘the U of A.’”
