'Dragon Ball': Wait, What Does SSJ Mean?

If you are new to the Dragon Ball fandom, then you may feel a bit out of depth at times. The community has been thriving for decades now, and fans of Akira Toriyama’s franchise come at all different levels. When it comes to lingo, the fandom can be a tough one to decipher, but there’s one thing which can drive the most diehard fans nuts:

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Seriously, what does SSJ mean?

If you are only familiar with Dragon Ball‘s English dub, the confusion is understandable. Goku and the like are never referred to as being SSJ, but followers of the Japanese dub can likely parse together the initial. When it comes down to it, the term SSJ is one fans use to refer to the Super Saiyan transformation.

In the Japanese dub, the Super Saiyans are not called as such; They are called ‘Super Saiyajin’ instead. When you break down the translation, SSJ refers to three parts: Super, Saiya, Jin. Japanese uses ‘jin’ as a suffix to signify a person’s race or ethnicity. Saiya literally translates to vegetable, but Dragon Ball uses it as a raceas well. When put together, Saiyajin simple means a person who is of the Saiya race.

Of course, there are some fans probably wondering how SSJ got started then. When the anime began to get popular in the U.S., the underground fandom wanted an easy way to talk about the Super Saiyan forms. The franchise’s romanized names were not yet popularized, so early fans simply initialized Super Saiyajin instead.

Over the years, SSJ and its following forms grew popular within the online fandom. SSJ2 is a way to shorthand Super Saiyan 2 and the same goes for SSJ3 as well as SSJ4. Super Saiyan God also uses the initial through SSG while SSB stands for Super Saiyan Blue.

Dragon Ball Super‘s “Universal Survival” saga is part of the recent simulcast agreement that sites like Crunchyroll and Funimation have scored. Dragon Ball Super airs on Crunchyroll Saturdays at 7:15 p.m. CST. Toonami airs the English dub on Adult Swim Saturdays at 11:30 p.m.