This project began with modest ambitions: a casual examination of some band names that have inspired us over the years, along with their origins or creation myths. As we dove into this treasure trove of nomenclature, however, the scope escalated into an deep investigation of over a hundred years’ worth of band name etymologies. The first dozen or so entries are not band names per se, but stage names, nicknames, and pseudonyms of seminal artists that have shaped the course of music and the manner in which bands and musicians are branded.

Our goal here is not to be exhaustive and include every famous band you’ve ever heard of, but rather to be definitive without being overly obvious, and keep the emphasis on interesting and intriguing band names, or bands with name origin stories that illuminate different aspects of the naming process. See the bottom of the article for a postscript identifying some of the trends in band naming over the years, along with a list of links to sources we consulted during this project.

So let us introduce to you, the acts you’ve never known for all these years…

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1900s — Blind Lemon Jefferson: The stage name for bluesman Lemon Henry Jefferson.

1900 — Jelly Roll Morton: Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe, known professionally as Jelly Roll Morton, was an American ragtime and early jazz pianist, bandleader and composer. His composition “Jelly Roll Blues” was the first published jazz composition, in 1915. At the age of fourteen, Morton began working as a piano player in a brothel (or, as it was referred to then, a “sporting house”). While working there, he was living with his religious, church-going great-grandmother; he had her convinced that he worked as a night watchman in a barrel factory. In that atmosphere, he often sang smutty lyrics; and took the nickname “Jelly Roll,” which was slang for female genitalia.

1903 — Lead Belly: Born Huddie William Ledbetter, there are several conflicting stories about how Ledbetter acquired the nickname “Lead Belly,” though it was probably while in prison. Some claim his fellow inmates called him “Lead Belly” as a play on his family name and his physical toughness. Others say he earned the name after being wounded in the stomach with buckshot. Another theory is that the name refers to his ability to drink moonshine. Or it may be simply a corruption of his last name pronounced with a southern accent. Whatever its origin, he adopted the nickname as a pseudonym while performing.

1918 — Fats Waller: Thomas Wright “Fats” Waller was an American jazz pianist, organist, composer, and singer. Andy Razaf described his partner as “the soul of melody…a man who made the piano sing…both big in body and in mind…known for his generosity…a bubbling bundle of joy.”

1920s — Son House: Eddie James “Son” House, Jr. was a blues singer and guitarist.

1920s — Roosevelt Sykes: An American blues musician, also known as “The Honeydripper.”

1920s — Tampa Red: Born Hudson Woodbridge, he moved to Chicago and adopted the stage name from his childhood home and light colored skin.

1924 — Bix Beiderbecke: Leon Bismark “Bix” Beiderbecke was an American jazz cornetist, jazz pianist, and composer. His father was nicknamed “Bix,” as, for a time, was his older brother, Charles Burnette “Burnie” Beiderbecke. Burnie Beiderbecke claimed that the boy was named Leon Bix and subsequent biographers have reproduced birth certificates to that effect. However, more recent research—which takes into account church and school records in addition to the will of a relative—has suggested that he was originally named Leon Bismark. Regardless, his parents called him Bix, which seems to have been his preference.

1928 — Count Basie: The stage name for William James “Count” Basie.

1928 — Mississippi John Hurt: The great blues singer and guitarist was born John Smith Hurt in Teoc, Missisippi, and raised in Avalon, Mississippi. He learned to play guitar at age nine.

1928 — T-Bone Walker: Aaron Thibeaux “T-Bone” Walker was a critically acclaimed American blues guitarist, singer, and songwriter. Walker made his recording debut with Columbia Records billed as Oak Cliff T-Bone, releasing the single “Wichita Falls Blues” / “Trinity River Blues.” Oak Cliff was the community he lived in at the time and T-Bone a corruption of his middle name.

1929 — Memphis Minnie: Lizzie Douglas, known as Memphis Minnie, was a blues guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter. In 1929 she and Kansas Joe McCoy, her second husband, began to perform together. They were discovered by a talent scout of Columbia Records in front of a barber shop where they were playing for dimes. When she and McCoy went to record in New York, they were given the names Kansas Joe and Memphis Minnie by a Columbia A&R man.

1930s — Lightnin’ Hopkins: The stage name country blues singer Sam John Hopkins.

1931 — Skip James: Nehemiah Curtis “Skip” James was an American Delta blues singer, guitarist, pianist and songwriter.

1935 — Dizzy Gillespie: John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie was a jazz trumpeter, bandleader, composer and occasional singer. Dizzy was christened John Gillespie, earning his nickname later in life when he was known for his sense of humor and practical jokes.

1937 — Sonny Boy Williamson I & Sonny Boy Williamson II: The recordings made by John Lee Williamson between 1937 and his death in 1948, and those made later by “Rice” Miller, were all originally issued under the name Sonny Boy Williamson. It is believed that Miller adopted the name to suggest to audiences, and his first record label, that he was the “original” Sonny Boy. In order to differentiate between the two musicians, many later scholars and biographers now refer to Williamson (1914-1948) as “Sonny Boy Williamson I,” and Miller (c.1912-1965) as “Sonny Boy Williamson II”

1939 — The Squadronaires: A British Royal Air Force band which began and performed in during World War II.

1940s — Howlin’ Wolf: Chester Arthur Burnett was a great Chicago blues singer, guitarist and harmonica player, from Mississippi. He explained the origin of the name Howlin’ Wolf: “I got that from my grandfather,” who would often tell him stories about the wolves in that part of the country and warn him that if he misbehaved, the “howling wolves” would get him. Paul Oliver wrote that Burnett once claimed to have been given his nickname by his idol Jimmie Rodgers.

1940s — Muddy Waters: The stage name of Chicago bluesman McKinley Morganfield. Waters’ grandmother, Della Grant, raised him after his mother died shortly following his birth. Della gave the boy the nickname “Muddy” at an early age because he loved to play in the muddy water of nearby Deer Creek. Waters later changed it to “Muddy Water” and finally “Muddy Waters.”

1948 — The Jordanaires: An American vocal quartet named after Jordan Creek in Missouri, not the Jordan River, as many have thought.

1950s — Slim Harpo: Born James Isaac Moore. Moore began performing in Baton Rouge bars under the name Harmonica Slim, and also accompanied his brother-in-law Lightnin’ Slim in live performance. A master of the blues harmonica, his stage name was derived from the popular nickname for that instrument, the “harp.”

1952 — Sun Ra: Claiming that he was of the “Angel Race” and not from Earth but from Saturn, Sun Ra developed a complex persona, using “cosmic” philosophies and lyrical poetry that made him a pioneer of afrofuturism. He preached awareness and peace above all. He abandoned his birth name and took on the name and persona of Sun Ra (Ra being the Egyptian God of the Sun), and used several other names throughout his career, including Le Sonra and Sonny Lee. Sun Ra denied any connection with his birth name, saying “That’s an imaginary person, never existed… Any name that I use other than Ra is a pseudonym.”

1955 — Conway Twitty: The stage name of Harold Lloyd Jenkins. The moniker was created by mashing up Conway, Arkansas, and Twitty, Texas.

1958 — Little Anthony and the Imperials: Changed their name to the Imperials, when they signed with End Records.

1958 — Sonny Rhodes: Born Clarence Edward Smith, Rhodes is an American blues singer and lap steel guitar player.

1958 — The Canadian Sweethearts: Often referred to as Bob & Lucille, the duo recorded at a small recording studio in Hollywood, California and later for Epic Records in Nashville.

1960 — The Beatles: This obscure band briefly called themselves the Blackjacks, before changing their name to the Quarrymen after discovering that a respected local group was already using the other name. John Lennon’s art school friend Stuart Sutcliffe joined the band in January 1960, and it was he who suggested changing the band’s name to Beatals, as a tribute to Buddy Holly and the Crickets. They used the name until May, when they became the Silver Beetles. By early July, they had changed their name to the Silver Beatles and by the middle of August to The Beatles.

1960 — The Temptations: Originally called the The Cavaliers, Primes, The El Domingoes and The Distants.

1961 — The Beach Boys: The band got their first record deal with Candix Records as The Pendletones (a play on a popular brand of shirt worn by 60s surfers, Pendleton). When copies of their first single, “Surfin,'” arrived they were surprised to read “by The Beach Boys.” They had never heard of the Beach Boys. After some calls they were told a young promotion worker named Russ Regan had changed the name. There was no money to reprint all the labels.

1961 — The Zombies: Their original name was The Mustangs, but they quickly realized that there were other groups with that name.

1962 — Question Mark and the Mysterians: ? (Question Mark) was born Rudy Martinez. Here is Gary James’ Interview with the band’s leader, ? (Question Mark), regarding the the band’s name: Gary James: “Right. Did you come up with the name Question Mark and The Mysterians?” ? (Question Mark): “Well, no. It was always The Mysterians. Question Mark was my name… We were called The Mysterians, X, Y, Z and I was Question Mark. I thought the three letters were mysterious letters of the alphabet and my thing was ‘why can’t those letters start the alphabet? Is there a reason why ABC has to be there and not XYZ?’ When you look at it that way, everything in life pertains that way too. The DJ at one radio station kept saying Question Mark and The Mysterians. People thought it was two groups… Question Mark and the other group was The Mysterians. Nobody told people there’s only one band. So, before ’96 Tears,’ we had to go on the radio and say ‘when you hear Question Mark and The Mysterians, it’s gonna be one group, not two groups.’ So, that’s how it got from The Mysterians to Question Mark and The Mysterians.”

1962 — The Hollies: An English pop/rock group known for their pioneering and distinctive three part vocal harmony style. It has been suggested that bass guitarist Eric Haydock named the group in relation to a Christmas holly garland, though in a 2009 interview, co-founder Graham Nash, later of CSNY fame, said that the group decided just prior to a performance to call themselves “the Hollies” because of their admiration for Buddy Holly. In 2009, Nash wrote, “We called ourselves the Hollies, after Buddy and Christmas.” [Perhaps at the time he wrote “after Buddy and Christmas,” Nash had the 2003 Christmas comedy film Elf on his mind, which starred Will Ferrell as Buddy the Elf. Pure speculation on our part, of course. -ed.]

1962 — The Righteous Brothers: They adopted their name while performing together in the Los Angeles area as part of a five-member group called The Paramours. At the end of one performance, a U.S. Marine in the audience shouted, “That was righteous, brothers!,” prompting the pair to adopt the name as they embarked on their duo career.

1962 — The Rolling Stones: According to Keith Richards, Brian Jones christened the band during a phone call to Jazz News. When asked for a band name Jones saw a Muddy Waters LP lying on the floor. One of the LP’s tracks was “Rollin’ Stone.”

1963 — The Animals: It has often been said they were dubbed “animals” because of their wild stage act, and the name stuck. In a 2013 interview, Eric Burdon denied this, stating it came from a gang of friends they used to hang out with, one of whom was “Animal” Hogg and the name was intended as a kind of tribute to him.

1963 — The Fugs: A band formed in New York City by poets Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg, with Ken Weaver on drums. Soon afterward, they were joined by Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber of the Holy Modal Rounders. Kupferberg named the band from a euphemism for “fuck” used in Norman Mailer’s novel, The Naked and the Dead.

1963 — The Kinks: Numerous explanations of the name’s genesis have been offered. In Jon Savage’s analysis, “[They] needed a gimmick, some edge to get them attention. Here it was: ‘Kinkiness’—something newsy, naughty but just on the borderline of acceptability. In adopting the ‘Kinks’ as their name at that time, they were participating in a time-honoured pop ritual—fame through outrage.” Manager Robert Wace related his side of the story: “I had a friend. … He thought the group was rather fun. If my memory is correct, he came up with the name just as an idea, as a good way of getting publicity. … When we went to [the band members] with the name, they were … absolutely horrified. They said, ‘We’re not going to be called kinky!'” Ray Davies’ account conflicts with Wace’s—he recalled that the name was coined by Larry Page, and referenced their “kinky” fashion sense. Davies quoted him as saying, “The way you look, and the clothes you wear, you ought to be called the Kinks.” “I’ve never really liked the name,” Ray stated.

1963 — The Yardbirds: This band grew out of Keith Relf’s The Metropolitan Blues Quartet. When the band changed members in 1963 Relf changed the name to Yardbirds partly from the nickname of jazz saxophonist Charlie “Bird” Parker, and partly from the American slang for prisoner.

1964 — Captain Beefheart: Don Van Vliet had a strange Uncle who would expose himself, squeeze his penis until the head turned purple, then comment about it looking “like a big ole’ beef heart.”

1964 — MC5: An acronym for Motor City Five.

1964 — Taj Mahal: The stage name for singer-songwriter Henry Saint Clair Fredericks.

1964 — The Amboy Dukes: The band’s name comes from the title of a novel by Irving Shulman. In the UK the group’s records were released under the name of The American Amboy Dukes because of the existence of a British group with the same name.

1964 — The Band: Originally called The Hawks, the band began playing with and backing Bob Dylan in 1965. In 1967, The Hawks began writing their own songs in a rented large pink house, which they affectionately named “Big Pink,” in West Saugerties, New York, near Woodstock, where Dylan was living at the time. When they went into the recording studio, they still did not have a name for themselves. Stories vary as to the manner in which they ultimately adopted the name “The Band.” According to Robbie Robertson, the “goofy” band names prevalent in the early ’60s seemed “childish,” so they decided to have no name. In The Last Waltz, Richard Manuel claimed that they wanted to call themselves either “The Honkies” or “The Crackers” (which they used when backing Dylan for a January 1968 concert tribute to Woody Guthrie), but these names were vetoed by their record label; Robertson suggests that during their time with Dylan everyone just referred to them as “the band” and it stuck. Initially, they disliked the moniker, but eventually grew to like it, thinking it both humble and presumptuous. In 1969, Rolling Stone referred to them as “The band from Big Pink.”

1964 — The Critters: They named themselves in emulation of similar band names like The Animals.

1964 — The Mothers of Invention: Originally an R&B band called The Soul Giants. Frank Zappa was asked to take over as the guitarist following a fight between band members. Zappa insisted that they perform his original material, changing their name on Mother’s Day to The Mothers, which for legal liability reasons was morphed by record executive decision into The Mothers of Invention.

1964 — The Rationals: A garage rock band from Ann Arbor, Michigan.

1964 — The Troggs: Originally called The Troglodytes, as in, “one who dwells in holes.”

1964 — The Who: Originally called The Detours, they changed their name to The Who after a suggestion by Pete Townshend’s friend Richard Barnes. Their first manager, Pete Meaden, renamed them The High Numbers, and they released one unsuccessful single, Zoot Suit, under that name. When EMI dropped them, the band sacked Pete Meaden and went back to being called The Who. Another possible reason was because of Pete Townshend’s grandmother, who would always refer to popular bands as “The Who?,” due to her impaired hearing.

1965 — 13th Floor Elevators: The name was developed from a suggestion by drummer John Ike Walton to use the name “Elevators,” and Clementine Hall added “13th Floor.” In addition to an awareness that a number of tall buildings don’t have a 13th floor, it has been noted that the letter “M” (for marijuana) is the thirteenth letter of the alphabet. But there’s another “level” of signification for the band’s name. Indeed, it also refers to the 13th and very last floor of the pyramid of enlightenment, where stands the “all seeing eye” or “third eye,” featured prominently in the band imagery, and which, according to Roky Erickson, defines the psychedelic music itself (“it’s where the pyramid meets the eye”).

1965 — Big Brother And The Holding Company: The name was selected by concert promoter Chet Helms from a list of names that the band was reviewing for consideration. “Big Brother” was near the top of the list and “The Holding Company” close to the bottom; with a decision to combine the two, Big Brother and the Holding Company was born.

1965 — Grateful Dead: According to Phil Lesh, in his biography, .”..Jerry Garcia picked up an old Britannica World Language Dictionary…[and]…In that silvery elf-voice he said to me, “Hey, man, how about the Grateful Dead?” The definition there was “the soul of a dead person, or his angel, showing gratitude to someone who, as an act of charity, arranged their burial.”

1965 — Jefferson Airplane: The origin of the group’s name is often disputed. “Jefferson airplane” is slang for a used paper match splint to hold a marijuana joint that has been smoked too short to hold without burning the fingers — an improvised roach clip. A popular conjecture suggests this was the origin of the band’s name, but band member Jorma Kaukonen has denied this and stated that the name was invented by his friend Steve Talbot as a parody of blues names such as Blind Lemon Jefferson. A 2007 press release quoted Kaukonen as saying: “I had this friend [Talbot] in Berkeley who came up with funny names for people,” explains Kaukonen. “His name for me was Blind Thomas Jefferson Airplane (for blues pioneer Blind Lemon Jefferson). When the guys were looking for band names and nobody could come up with something, I remember saying, ‘You want a silly band name? I got a silly band name for you!'”

1965 — Pink Floyd: Syd Barrett came up with the name The Pink Floyd Sound, after two blues musicians, Pink Anderson and Floyd Council. “Sound” was dropped fairly quickly, but the definite article was still used regularly until 1970.

1965 — Savoy Brown: Originally called Savoy Brown Blues Band to emphasize their Blues-style repertoire. They took Savoy from the US blues label, Savoy Records, which they thought sounded elegant, and “Brown” because they perceived it as being about as plain as you can get. Strung together, the words created a balance of opposites.

1965 — The Doors: An American rock band formed in Los Angeles. The band took its name from Aldous Huxley’s book The Doors of Perception, the title of which was itself derived from a line in William Blake’s The Marriage of Heaven and Hell: “When the doors of perception are cleansed, things will appear to man as they truly are… infinite.”

1965 — The Velvet Underground: The Velvet Underground, by Michael Leigh, was a paperback about the secret sexual subculture of the early 1960s that John Cale’s friend Tony Conrad — an American avant-garde video artist, experimental filmmaker, musician/composer, sound artist, teacher and writer — showed to the group (See “1981 — The Dream Syndicate,” below, for more on Conrad). According to Lou Reed and Sterling Morrison, the group liked the name, considering it evocative of “underground cinema,” and fitting, as Reed had already written “Venus in Furs,” a song inspired by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s book of the same name, which dealt with masochism.

1966 — Buffalo Springfield: An American-Canadian country-folk-rock band whose members included Richie Furay, Stephen Stills, Neil Young, Dewey Martin, Bruce Palmer, Jim Messina, Ken Koblun, and Jim Fielder. The group’s name was taken from the side of a steamroller, made by the Springfield, Ohio-based Buffalo-Springfield Roller Company (now part of BOMAG), that had been parked on the street outside record producer and the band’s first manager Barry Friedman’s house where Stills and Furay were staying at the time.

1966 — Ford Theatre: A psychedelic band from Boston that were active in between 1966 and 1971.

1966 — Iron Butterfly: The original Iron Butterfly (“In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida”) “album insert text” stated that the Iron Butterfly name was to indicate something heavy in their music (Iron) while reflecting something free and light (butterfly).

1966 — Soft Machine: An English rock band from Canterbury, named after the book The Soft Machine by William S. Burroughs.

1966 — Ten Years After: Co-founder Alvin Lee was a big fan of Elvis Presley. When he named the band in 1966 it was ten years after Presley’s momentous debut in 1956. That year Elvis put out two amazing albums and four number one singles. Some sources claim that the name was pulled from a magazine, advertising a book titled “Ten Years After The Suez” (referring to the Suez Crisis).

1966 — The 5th Dimension: Originally known as The Versatiles and formed in late 1965, the 5-member group, according to founder, LaMonte McLemore, changed its name to the hipper moniker, The 5th Dimension, by 1966. A spin-off group from The Versatiles was called The Friends of Distinction.

1966 — The Jimi Hendrix Experience: The name was coined by the band’s business manager Mike Jeffery.

1967 — Fairport Convention: As young musicians in the mid 1960s, they used to “convene” for rehearsals at a house named Fairport, the family home of rhythm guitarist Simon Nicol, in Muswell Hill, North London (the same district in which Ray and Dave Davies of the Kinks grew up); thus was born the name of the band.

1967 — Jethro Tull: A British rock group, formed in Luton, Bedfordshire. At first, the new band had trouble getting repeat bookings and they took to changing their name frequently to continue playing the London club circuit. Some of those early names included “Navy Blue,” “Ian Henderson’s Bag o’ Nails,” and “Candy Coloured Rain.” Band leader Ian Anderson recalled looking at a poster at a club and concluding that the band name he didn’t recognize was his. Band names were often supplied by their booking agents’ staff, one of whom, a history enthusiast, eventually christened them “Jethro Tull” after the 18th-century agriculturist. The name stuck because they happened to be using it the first time a club manager liked their show enough to invite them to return. The band’s first single was released in February, 1968, on MGM Records, and miscredited to “Jethro Toe.”

1967 — Procol Harum: The band was named after a Blue Burmese male cat named Procul Harun, owned by a friend (drug dealer?) of the band’s manager, Guy Stevens (who also thought up the band name Mott The Hoople, BTW). The band misspelled the name. According to Band Name Explained, “Later Stevens…made other attempts to attach a meaning to the name: according to him Procul Harun is Latin, meaning something like ‘far beyond these things.’ Singer and pianist Gary Brooker let the world know that he was completely happy with that statement, because, as he said, the cat’s name could have meant something like ‘I’m going to buy a cow’ just as well. The editors of this encyclopedia however cherish their own theory: we consider it possible that the cat of Stevens’ friend was named after the biggest ‘ocean’ (called ‘mare’) that can be found on the moon: Procellarum.”

1967 — Silver Apples: This New York electronic music duo named themselves after a line in the Yeats poem The “Wandering Angus”: “.. The silver apples of the moon, the golden apples of the sun.”

1967 — Sly and the Family Stone: Sly Stone (born Sylvester Stewart) formed a band called Sly & the Stoners. Around the same time, Sly’s brother Freddie Stone founded a band called Freddie & the Stone Souls. At the suggestion of Sly’s friend, saxophonist Jerry Martini, Sly and Freddie combined their bands, creating Sly and the Family Stone.

1967 — Steppenwolf: A Canadian-American rock band fronted by vocalist John Kay. The name Steppenwolf was suggested to John Kay by record producer Gabriel Mekler, being inspired by Hermann Hesse’s novel of the same name.

1967 — T. Rex: Originally Tyrannosaurus Rex, Tony Visconti (their producer for several albums) claimed in a documentary on the band that he had taken to using the abbreviated term “T. Rex” as a shorthand, something that initially irritated Marc Bolan, who gradually came around to the idea and officially shortened the band’s name to “T. Rex.”

1967 — Tangerine Dream: A German electronic music group founded by Edgar Froese. The band’s name was inspired by the line “tangerine trees and marmalade skies” from The Beatles’ song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.”

1967 — The Stooges: Also known as Iggy and the Stooges. The band was originally billed as the “Psychedelic Stooges” at the Grande Ballroom in Detroit, Michigan, and other venues, where they played with MC5 and others.

1967 — The Strawberry Alarm Clock: A psychedelic rock band from Los Angeles with the trendily faux-Brit-archaic name Thee Sixpence recorded a song in 1967 called “Incense and Peppermints.” Depending on who’s telling the story, either the band or their new label, Uni Records, brainstormed a more resonant name, inspired by the Beatles hit “Strawberry Fields Forever,” the madcap free-associative energies of the ’60s and, uh, an alarm clock.

1967 — Three Dog Night: The official commentary included in the CD set Celebrate: The Three Dog Night Story, 1964–1975 states that vocalist Danny Hutton’s girlfriend, actress June Fairchild (best known as the “Ajax Lady” from the Cheech and Chong movie Up In Smoke) suggested the name after reading a magazine article about indigenous Australians, in which it was explained that on cold nights they would customarily sleep in a hole in the ground while embracing a dingo (feral dog). On colder nights they would sleep with two dogs and, if the night was freezing, it was a “three dog night.”

1968 — Alice Cooper: Alice Cooper was a successful band with seven albums released between 1969 and 1973, before one of its founding members, Vincent Damon Furnier, started a solo career under the same name with the 1975 concept album Welcome to My Nightmare. Furnier believed that the group needed a gimmick to succeed, and that other bands were not exploiting the showmanship potential of the stage. The legend is that the name “Alice Cooper” came from a session with a Ouija board, largely chosen because it sounded innocuous and wholesome, like somebody’s grandmother, in humorous contrast to the band’s image and music. However, in a 2009 interview, Cooper described the incident with the ouija board as an Urban legend: “We literally got that whole story about the witch thing the way you guys got it. It was like just pure urban legend. I heard about the witch thing probably the same day you did, but it was a great story.” “Alice Cooper” was a character on Mayberry R.F.D. (played by Alice Ghostley) at the time, probably coincidentally. Furnier, now known as Alice Cooper, later stated that the name change was one of his most important and successful career moves…. At the time, Cooper and the band realized that the concept of a male playing the role of a villain, a woman killer, in tattered women’s clothing and wearing make-up, would have the potential to cause considerable social controversy and grab headlines. In 2007, in his book Alice Cooper, Golf Monster, Cooper stated that his look was inspired in part by film. One of the band’s all-time favorite movies was What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? starring Bette Davis. “In the movie, Bette wears disgusting caked makeup smeared on her face and underneath her eyes, with deep, dark, black eyeliner.” Another movie the band watched over and over was Barbarella. “When I saw Anita Pallenberg playing the Great Tyrant in that movie in 1968, wearing long black leather gloves with switchblades coming out of them, I thought, ‘That’s what Alice should look like.’ That, and a little bit of Emma Peel from The Avengers.” [Also inspired by Barbarella, Duran-Duran, 1978.]

1968 — Can: The band used the names “Inner Space” and “The Can” before finally settling on “CAN.” Founder Jaki Liebezeit subsequently suggested the backronym “communism, anarchism, nihilism” for the band’s name.

1968 — Funkadelic: The group that would become Funkadelic was originally formed by George Clinton in 1964, as the unnamed musical backing for his doo wop group The Parliaments, while on tour. The band name “Funkadelic” was coined by bassist Billy Bass Nelson after the band relocated to Detroit.

1968 — King Crimson: The band name was coined by lyricist Peter Sinfield as a synonym for Beelzebub, prince of demons. According to Robert Fripp, Beelzebub would be an anglicized form of the Arabic phrase “B’il Sabab,” meaning “the man with an aim.” Historically and etymologically, a “crimson king” was any monarch during whose reign there was civil unrest and copious bloodshed.

1968 — Led Zeppelin: One account of how the new band’s name was chosen held that Keith Moon of the Who had suggested that the supergroup would go down like a “lead balloon,” an idiom for disastrous results. The group dropped the ‘a’ in lead at the suggestion of their manager, Peter Grant, so that those unfamiliar with the term would not pronounce it “leed.” The word “balloon” was swapped for “zeppelin,” a word which, according to music journalist Keith Shadwick, brought “the perfect combination of heavy and light, combustibility and grace,” to Jimmy Page’s mind.

1969 — Badfinger: Originally called The Iveys after a street in Swansea, Wales. Once the band was signed to Apple Records by The Beatles, the band took the opportunity to change their name. The name Badfinger was derived from “Bad Finger Boogie,” the working title of The Beatles’ “With a Little Help from My Friends.”

1969 — Crazy Horse: Neil Young’s long-time backup band took their name in homage to the Oglala Lakota Indian chief who fought to keep Europeans from settling in what would become the Western United States.

1969 — Flaming Youth: A British rock group that recorded one album before breaking up. The band is most notable as the first professional band of Phil Collins, then 18 years old.

1969 — Mott the Hoople: While in prison on a drug offense, Guy Stevens of Island Records read the Willard Manus novel Mott the Hoople about an eccentric who works in a circus freak show, and decided to use it as a band name.

1969 — Steeleye Span: The name Steeleye Span comes from a character in the traditional song Horkstow Grange. The song gives an account of a fight between John “Steeleye” Span and John Bowlin, neither of whom are proven to have been real people. Band member Martin Carthy gave co-founder Tim Hart the idea to name the band after the song character. When the band discussed names, they decided to choose from among three suggestions: “Middlemarch Wait,” “Iyubidin’s Wait,” and “Steeleye Span.” Although there were only five members in the band, six ballots appeared and “Steeleye Span” won out. Only in 1978 did Hart confess that he had voted twice. Terry Woods maintains that the members had agreed that if more than one person departed, the remaining members would select a new name, and he was upset that this did not happen when he and Gay Woods left the band. The liner notes for their first album include thanks to Carthy for the name suggestion.

1968 — The Last Poets: Is the name for several groups of poets and musicians who arose from the late 1960s African-American civil rights movement’s black nationalist movement. The name is taken from a poem by the South African revolutionary poet Keorapetse Kgositsile, who believed he was in the last era of poetry before guns would take over. The original users of that name were the trio of Felipe Luciano, Gylan Kain, and David Nelson.

1969 — The 69’ers: An Australian rock, pop, jug and country band.

1969 — Uriah Heep: The band name originates from the fictional character created by Charles Dickens in his novel David Copperfield.

1969 — ZZ Top: An American rock band that formed in Houston, Texas. Billy Gibbons wrote in his autobiography, Billy F Gibbons: Rock + Roll Gearhead, that he used to live in an apartment decorated with several concert posters and flyers, including Z.Z. Hill and B.B. King. After playing around with names like Z.Z. King and B.B. Hill he ended up with ZZ Top.

1970 — Kraftwerk: German for “power plant.”

1970 — Queen: The band were originally called Smile. Singer Freddie Mercury came up with the new name for the band, later saying: “Years ago I thought up the name ‘Queen’ … It’s just a name, but it’s very regal obviously, and it sounds splendid … It’s a strong name, very universal and immediate. It had a lot of visual potential and was open to all sorts of interpretations. I was certainly aware of gay connotations, but that was just one face of it.”

1970 — Roxy Music: The group’s name was partly an homage to the titles of old cinemas and dance halls, and partly a pun on the word rock. Frontman Brian Ferry had named the band Roxy originally, but after learning of an American band with the same name he changed the name to Roxy Music.

1970 — The Modern Lovers: Their only album, the eponymous The Modern Lovers, contained idiosyncratic songs about dating, awkwardness, growing up in Massachusetts.

1971 — Cluster: Dieter Moebius, Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Conrad Schnitzler formed Kluster (with a “K”) in 1969, after the three had met at the Zodiak Free Arts Lab in West Berlin, Germany. When Schnitzler left the group, Roedelius and Moebius became Cluster.

1971 — The Residents: The group sent a reel-to-reel tape to Hal Halverstadt at Warner Brothers. Because the band had not included any name in the return address, the rejection slip was simply addressed to “The Residents.” The members of the group then decided that this would be the name they would use, first becoming Residents Unincorporated, then shortening it to the The Residents.

1972 — 10cc: An English art rock band from Salford and Prestwich. By his own account, Jonathan King chose the name for the band after signing the band to his record label UK Records, after having a dream in which he was standing in front of the Hammersmith Odeon in London where the boarding read “10cc The Best Band in the World.” A widely repeated claim, disputed by King and band member Kevin Godley, but confirmed in a 1988 interview by Lol Creme and also on the webpage of founding member Graham Gouldman’s current line-up, is that the band name represented a volume of semen that was more than the average amount ejaculated by men, thus emphasising their potency or prowess. However they got to their eventual name, the band first tore through a hilarious variety of names during gigs and/or singles recordings, including The Whirlwinds, The Mockingbirds, The Yellow Bellow Room Boom, Crazy Elephant, Fighter Squadron, Silver Fleet, Freddie and the Dreamers, Hotlegs, Doctor Father, and The New Wave Band, the last one adopted briefly in 1971, years before “New Wave” became a movement.

1972 — Oingo Boingo: The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo, formed in late 1972 by Richard Elfman, was a musical theater troupe in the tradition of Spike Jones and Frank Zappa, performing an eclectic repertoire ranging from Cab Calloway covers to instrumentals in the style of Balinese gamelan and Russian ballet music. The name was inspired by a fictional secret society on the Amos ‘n’ Andy TV series called The Mystic Knights of the Sea. While the troupe was transforming itself into a rock band, there was some confusion about what name the band would use. For some gigs, the band used the shortened name The Mystic Knights, later, the full name was shortened in the other direction to Oingo Boingo in 1979.

1972 — Steely Dan: Named after a dildo in the novel Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs.

1973 — Cabaret Voltaire: Named after a nightclub in Zürich, Switzerland, that was a center for the early Dada movement.

1973 — Destroy All Monsters: The first edition of band was formed by University of Michigan art students Mike Kelley, Jim Shaw, Niagara (Lynn Rovner) and filmmaker Cary Loren. They performed in the Ann Arbor area from 1973–1976, and their only release was a one-hour cassette of their recordings available only through Lightworks magazine.

1973 — Devo: The name comes from their concept of ‘de-evolution’ — the idea that instead of continuing to evolve, mankind has actually begun to regress, as evidenced by the dysfunction and herd mentality of American society.

1973 — Television: An American rock band, formed in New York City and considered influential in the development of punk and alternative music. A few years after singer-guitarist Thomas Miller rechristened himself Tom Verlaine (after Symbolist poet Paul Verlaine), he reconfigured his band, the Neon Boys, and named the new lineup after another TV entirely. Though Verlaine explained that “Television” referred to “the visionary aspects of art, rather than the media aspects. It’s really not like TV as something ‘supermodern’ or something ‘media’ or ‘electronic’ or that kind of far-out William Burroughs kind of stuff.” Verlaine loved to toy with the name’s poetic resonances, too: One early song was called “Elevation;” another included the line “He’s just trying to tell a vision.”

1974 — Squeeze: The group performed under several names, most frequently Captain Trundlow’s Sky Company or Skyco, before selecting the band name Squeeze as a facetious tribute to The Velvet Underground’s oft-derided album Squeeze.

1974 — The Ramones: An American punk rock band that formed in the New York City neighborhood of Forest Hills, Queens. Paul McCartney used the alias Paul Ramone when booking hotel rooms during his Silver Beatles days. So the band decided to use the last name The Ramones, and all of the band members adopted pseudonyms ending with the surname “Ramone,” although none of them were related.

1975 — Half Japanese: An art punk band formed by brothers Jad and David Fai.

1975 — Pere Ubu: The main character in Alfred Jarry’s play, Ubu Roi.

1975 — Sex Pistols: The name was, no doubt, intended to bring to mind the male sex organ, but manager Malcolm McLaren has stated that he wanted the band to be “sexy young assassins.”

1975 — Talking Heads: Bassist Tina Weymouth explained that, “a friend had found the name in the TV Guide, which explained the term used by TV studios to describe a head-and-shoulder shot of a person talking as ‘all content, no action.'”

1975 — Throbbing Gristle: They asserted they wanted to provoke their audience into thinking for themselves rather than pushing any specific agenda (as evidenced by the song “Don’t Do As You’re Told, Do As You Think”). Spin magazine wrote of the band’s name: “If you don’t have your urban dick-tionary handy, member Cosey Fanni Tutti broke it down matter-of-factly in a 1978 interview: ‘Throbbing Gristle is Yorkshire slang for an erection.’ When asked why they chose that as a name, Genesis P-Orridge replied, “Because it was daft.”… Evocative and provocative, it’s Chaucer-level as far as wiener jokes go. And the idea of Throbbing Gristle really couldn’t be more appropriate for a formless, pulsating primal noise that equates the throbbing of sex with the throbbing of the headaches that often thwart it. P-Orridge especially relished how writers would over-intellectualize the band, yet be forced to pop his boner into their prose, turning their highfalutin arguments instantly absurd.”

1976 — Black Flag: Suggested by guitarist Greg Ginn’s brother, Raymond Pettibone, because, “if a white flag means surrender, a black flag means anarchy.”

1976 — Boris Policeband: Boris Pearlman became Boris Policeband after a live performance in which he monitored, on headphones, police communications from a scanner and recited their chatter while he accompanied himself on electric violin. Boris was fascinated by cop culture and the often prosaic and sometimes poetic reality of law enforcement chatter. Over the years the cop-talk and violin-screech coalesced into discrete songs that at times recalls the dissonant violin playing of the Fluxus artist Henry Flynt.

1976 — Buzzcocks: The band chose the name after reading the headline, “It’s the Buzz, Cock!,” in a review of the TV series “Rock Follies” in Time Out magazine. The “buzz” is the excitement of playing on stage; “cock” is Manchester slang meaning “mate” (as in friend/buddy).

1976 — Jello Biafra: Born Eric Reed Boucher. The lead singer of the Dead Kennedys created his name as an ironic combination of a nutritionally poor mass-produced food product and a secessionist state in south-eastern Nigeria that existed from 1967 to 1970 and precipitated the Nigerian Civil War, also known as the Nigerian-Biafran War, in which a million civilians died from fighting and famine. Mr. Biafra said he likes how the two ideas clash in people’s minds.

1976 — Prince: Prince Roger Nelson, known by his mononym Prince, is an American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and actor. Prince’s father was a pianist and songwriter and his mother was a jazz singer. Prince was named after his father, whose stage name was Prince Rogers, and who performed with a jazz group called the Prince Rogers Trio. In a 1991 interview with A Current Affair, Prince’s father said, “I named my son Prince because I wanted him to do everything I wanted to do.” Prince’s childhood nickname was Skipper.

1976 — Sioxsie & The Banshees: An English rock band formed in London by vocalist Siouxsie Sioux and bass guitarist Steven Severin.

1976 — The B-52’s (styled as The B-52s as of 2008): The band’s name comes from a particular beehive hairdo resembling the nose cone of the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress aircraft.

1976 — The Clash: The name came from a newspaper headline describing “A Clash With Police.”

1976 — The Cramps: Lux Interior (born Erick Lee Purkhiser) took his stage name from a car ad, and Poison Ivy (born Kristy Marlana Wallace) claimed to have received hers in a dream (she was first Poison Ivy Rorschach, taking her last name from that of the inventor of the Rorschach test). In light of their common artistic interests and shared devotion to record collecting, they decided to form The Cramps.

1976 — The Cure: The band’s original name was Easy Cure, which was taken from the name of one of the group’s early songs. The name was later shortened to The Cure because frontman Robert Smith felt the name was too American and “too hippyish.”

1976 — The Fall: An English post-punk band formed in Manchester. Bassist Tony Friel came up with the name The Fall after the 1956 novel by Albert Camus.

1976 — The Feelies: The name is based on Aldous Huxley’s 1932 dystopian novel Brave New World. In the novel there are theaters where all of your senses are incorporated along with sight, called “the feelies,” which are Huxley’s critical response to the movies.

1976 — The Gizmos: A protopunk band from Bloomington, Indiana.

1976 — The Members: A British punk band.

1976 — XTC: Also known as The Dukes of Stratosphear, Terry and the Lovemen, and The Three Wise Men, XTC were a New Wave rock band from Swindon, England, led by songwriters Andy Partridge and Colin Moulding.

1977 — Crime and the City Solution: What was the inspiration for the name of the band? A dream, according singer-songwriter and mainstay, Simon Bonney.

1977 — Gang of Four: Inspired by a newspaper article on the intra-Party coup against China’s “Gang of Four” (Jiang Qing, Mao Zedong’s last wife Jiang Qing and The gang’s leading figure; Zhang Chunqiao; Yao Wenyuan; and Wang Hongwen).

1977 — Simple Minds: A Scottish rock band. Name comes from a line in the David Bowie song “Jean Genie”: “He’s so simple minded / he can’t drive his module / He bites on the neon and sleeps in the capsule / Loves to be loved, loves to be loved.”

1977 — Stiff Little Fingers: This classic late ’70s band called themselves The Fast until they heard about the New York band with the same name. Band member Jake Burns had to think of a name fast for the sake of a newspaper ad. He was looking at the new (in 1977) “London Girls” single by the Vibrators and saw the song “Stiff Little Fingers” on the B-Side. He took it.

1977 — The Germs: The band’s original name was “Sophistifuck and the Revlon Spam Queens,” but they had to shorten the name as they could not afford that many letters on a T-shirt. Said Germs guitarist Pat Smear: “When we came up with the name the Germs the girls were disappointed. They said they thought we were more creative. It was supposed to be like the Germ of an idea, so you’d know we were there at the start.”

1977 — The Mekons: They took the name from the Mekon, an evil, super-intelligent Venusian featured in the British 1950s-1960s comic Dan Dare.

1977 — The Misfits: From the title of Marilyn Monroe’s final movie.

1977 — The Psychedelic Furs: They were initially called RKO, then Radio. They then vacillated between calling themselves The Europeans and The Psychedelic Furs, playing gigs under both names before permanently settling on the latter.

1977 — Theoretical Girls: Played only about 20 shows (three of which took place in Paris). They released one single (“U.S. Millie”/”You Got Me”), which had some attention in England where it sold a few thousand copies.

1977 — Wall of Voodoo: In reference to a comment made by Joe Berardi, a friend of Stan Ridgway’s. Berardi was listening to some of the music Ridgway and guitarist Marc Moreland had created in their studio. When Ridgway jokingly compared the multiple-drum-machine and Farfisa-organ-laden recordings to Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound, Berardi commented it sounded more like a “wall of voodoo.”

1977 — Warsaw Pakt: A short-lived punk group which were active in the years of 1977-78, though some of its members had heritages linking them to the 1960s underground. This was apparent in their sound, which was a sophisticated punk thrash with plenty of energy but also more structure than some contemporaries.

1977 — X: According to John Doe in “The Unheard Music,” X’s bassist/male singer happened upon the demolition of an Ex-Lax plant, and asked someone on the crew if he could take home one of the big “X” signs which once stood atop the plant. It sat in his apartment until it was time to name a band.

1978 — Bauhaus: An English post-punk band, formed in Northampton, England. Originally named “Bauhaus 1919” after the German Bauhaus art movement, and shortened to “Bauhaus” in 1979.

1978 — Dead Kennedys: The name was not meant to insult the assassinated Kennedy brothers, but, to quote vocalist Jello Biafra, “to bring attention to the end of the American Dream.”

1978 — Duran Duran: An English pop/rock band formed in Birmingham. The band played at Birmingham’s Barberella’s nightclub and thus took their name from the villain of Roger Vadim’s cult science fiction film Barbarella, Dr. Durand-Durand. [Also inspired by Barbarella, Alice Cooper, 1968.]

1978 — Echo & the Bunnymen: In the book Liverpool Explodes!, Will Sergeant explained the origin of the band’s name: “We had this mate who kept suggesting all these names like The Daz Men or Glisserol and the Fan Extractors. Echo and the Bunnymen was one of them. I thought it was just as stupid as the rest.”

1978 — Joy Division: The band was originally called Warsaw referencing David Bowie’s song “Warszawa.” In order to avoid confusion with the London punk band Warsaw Pakt, the band renamed themselves Joy Division in early 1978, borrowing their new name from the prostitution wing of a Nazi concentration camp mentioned in the 1955 novel House of Dolls.

1978 — Killing Joke: An English rock band from London. Singer Jaz Coleman gave an explanation regarding the creation of their name: “The killing joke is like when people watch something like Monty Python on the television and laugh, when really they’re laughing at themselves. It’s like a soldier in the first world war. He’s in the trench, he knows his life is gone and that within the next ten minutes he’s gonna be dead … and then suddenly he realises that some cunt back in Westminster’s got him sussed — ‘What am I doing this for? I don’t want to kill anyone, I’m just being controlled.'”

1978 — Prefab Sprout: A mondegreen from the Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood song, “Jackson,” misheard by frontman Paddy McAloon. The correct opening lyrics for “Jackson” are, “We got married in a fever, hotter than a pepper sprout,” which McAloon misinterpreted as “hotter than a prefab sprout.” However, Allmusic reckons that the prosaic truth is that “an adolescent McAloon had devised the meaningless name in homage to the longwinded and equally silly band names of his late 1960s / early 1970s youth.”

1978 — Primitive Calculators: A post-punk band from Australia, they became known for their use of a screeching Mosrite Ventures model guitar, primitive synthesizers, an electronic organ played through effects pedals, and an extra-fast drum machine.

1978 — The Urinals: A punk band from Southern California.

1979 — Cocteau Twins: The band was named after the song “The Cocteau Twins” by fellow Scotsmen Johnny and the Self-Abusers, who later renamed themselves Simple Minds; the song “The Cocteau Twins” was also re-penned as “No Cure.”

1979 — Hüsker Dü: The name of a Scandinavian memory-based board game that means “Do you remember?” The band chose this after it was shouted out by an audience member at one of their early shows.

1979 — Spinal Tap: A parody English heavy metal band that first appeared on a 1979 ABC TV sketch comedy pilot called The T.V. Show, starring Rob Reiner. The sketch, actually a mock promotional video for the song “Rock and Roll Nightmare,” was written by Reiner and the band, and included songwriter/performer Loudon Wainwright III on keyboards. Later the band became the fictional subject of the 1984 rockumentary/mockumentary film This Is Spinal Tap.

1979 — The Gun Club: After adopting the name The Creeping Ritual, they changed their name to The Gun Club, which was suggested by singer and guitarist Jeffrey Lee Pierce’s roommate and Black Flag singer Keith Morris.

1979 — The Replacements: According to Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981—1991 by Michael Azerrad, after the band were banned from a church hall venue for disorderly behavior, they changed their name to The Replacements to get back in the lineup. In an unpublished memoir, Mars later explained the band’s choice of name: “Like maybe the main act doesn’t show, and instead the crowd has to settle for an earful of us dirtbags…. It seemed to sit just right with us, accurately describing our collective ‘secondary’ social esteem.”

1979 — The The: A post-punk / new wave band featuring singer/songwriter Matt Johnson.

1979 — Was Not Was: An American eclectic pop group founded by David Weiss (a.k.a. David Was) and Don Fagenson (a.k.a. Don Was). The name of the band was derived from Fagenson’s then-infant son Tony, who was just beginning to talk and enjoyed contradicting words such as “Blue” with “Not Blue.”

1980 — Bad Religion: Bad Religion is a punk rock band that formed in Los Angeles, California in 1980. The band makes extensive use of soaring 3-part vocal harmonies (which they refer to in their album liner notes as the “oozin’ aahs”), guitar solos and lyrics that often contain religious and political commentary. Their lyrics often relate to matters of social responsibility. Founding member and lead vocalist Greg Graffin on their name: “You have to remember that we were fifteen-year-old punks — we wanted to piss people off. Anything that might make parents, teachers, and people with authority bristle was up for discussion. We also wanted a name that would suggest a great logo for stickers and T-shirts…. We played around with a lot of names involving the word “bad” – Bad Family Planning, Bad Politics. When we hit on Bad Religion, it seemed perfect. That year, 1980, was a time of rising prominence for televangelists like Jimmy Swaggart, Pat Robertson, and Jim Bakker. The year before, Jerry Falwell had founded the Moral Majority, which was having a powerful influence on the presidential election between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan. Religion was a hot topic, and those TV preachers seemed like a good target to us, though we didn’t think they could possibly last for more than a few years. We knew that most people were so defensive about their religious ideas that they would be highly offended by our name — a major plus! And then Brett came up with a logo that represented our philosophical stance. We felt complete.” Bad Religion’s logo has been referred to by fans as the “Crossbuster.” It features a black cross with a red prohibition sign over it. It was created by guitarist Brett Gurewitz by drawing it on a piece of paper and showing it to the rest of the band.

1980 — Dif Juz: It is believed that the name Dif Juz was adopted as a play on “different jazz,” but according to band member Richard Thomas, it was a spur-of-the-moment utterance that “didn’t mean anything.”

1980 — Einstürzende Neubauten: The band’s name is usually translated as “Collapsing New Buildings.” “Collapsing” here is a participial adjective, not a transitive verb: the intended meaning is “buildings that are collapsing.” “Neubauten” is a general term referring to buildings constructed in Germany after 1945. These are often regarded as cheaper, flimsier, and less aesthetically attractive than altbauten, or pre-1945, especially pre-modernist buildings. Due to the extensive destruction throughout Germany during the Second World War, and the extensive rebuilding thereafter, neubauten constitute a very familiar element of German cities.

1980 — Eyeless in Gaza: The band name is a reference to the novel Eyeless in Gaza by Aldous Huxley. Founding member Martyn Bates has said he chose the name “for the sound of it,” but he also acknowledged an allusion to the “biblical myth” of Samson from the Old Testament.

1980 — Meat Puppets: After briefly toying with the name The Bastions of Immaturity, they settled on the Meat Puppets.

1980 — Minutemen: Mike Watt has said their name had nothing at all to do with the brevity of their songs; rather, it was derived partly from the fabled minutemen militia of colonial times and partly to lampoon a right-wing reactionary group of the 1960s that went by that name. In the documentary “We Jam Econo,” Watt also states that the name was a play on “minute” (/maɪˈnjuːt/ my-newt).

1980 — New Order: Rob Gretton, the band’s manager for over twenty years, is credited for having found the name “New Order” in an article in The Guardian entitled “The People’s New Order of Kampuchea.” The band adopted this name, despite its previous use for ex-Stooge Ron Asheton’s band The New Order. The group states that the name New Order (as was also the case with “Joy Division”) does not draw a direct line to Nazism or Fascism.

1980 — Reagan Youth: An American punk rock band formed by singer Dave Rubinstein (Dave Insurgent) and guitarist Paul Bakija (Paul Cripple) in Queens. They are known for introducing the style of hardcore punk to the East Coast punk scene.

1980 — The Legendary Pink Dots: the band was originally called “One Day…” but subsequently changed the name to The Legendary Pink Dots, apparently inspired by pink dots on certain keys of the band’s main recording studio piano.

1980 — The Smithereens: The band’s name comes from a Yosemite Sam catchphrase, “Varmint, I’m a-gonna blow you to smithereens!”

1980 — Violent Femmes: Violent Femmes was founded by bassist Brian Ritchie and percussionist Victor DeLorenzo following the demise of the initial wave of American punk rock, and became a full-fledged band upon the arrival of lead vocalist and guitarist Gordon Gano.

1980 — Zoviet France: Also known as :$OVIET:FRANCE:, Soviet France, :Zoviet-France: and latterly usually written as :zoviet*france:), they are a dark ambient group from Newcastle, England.

1981 — 10,000 Maniacs: The band was originally named The Burn Victims before changing it to 10,000 Maniacs after the low-budget horror movie Two Thousand Maniacs!

1981 — Beastie Boys: The word “Beastie” is an acronym standing for “Boys Entering Anarchistic States Towards Internal Excellence.”

1981 — Butthole Surfers: The band, who previously changed their name at every gig, was performing a earlier version of 1984’s “Butthole Surfer” when the announcer forgot the band’s name and used the title of the song instead to introduce the band.

1981 — Dead Can Dance: Band member Brendan Perry explained the thinking behind their name: “To understand why we chose the name, think of the subtle transformation of something dead into something living — the transformation of inanimacy into animacy. Think of the processes concerning life from death, and death into life. Our music takes a similar path.”

1981 — Guadalcanal Diary: Based on the 1943 memoir of the same name by war correspondent Richard Tregaskis.

1981 — Run–D.M.C.: The three members of Run–D.M.C. — Joseph Simmons, Darryl McDaniels, and Jam Master Jay — grew up in Hollis, Queens. As a teenager, Simmons was recruited into hip-hop by his older brother, Russell, who was then an up-and-coming hip-hop promoter. Simmons appeared onstage as a DJ for rapper Kurtis Blow, who was managed by Russell. Known as “DJ Run, Son of Kurtis Blow,” Simmons soon began performing with Kurtis Blow. Previously, McDaniels had been more focused on athletics than music, but soon began to DJ after purchasing a set of turntables. Simmons convinced McDaniels to start rapping, and though McDaniels would not perform in public, he soon began writing rhymes and was known as “Easy D.”Russell Simmons, who was then an up-and-coming hip-hop promoter. agreed to help them record a new single and land a record deal, but only after he changed McDaniels’ stage name to ‘DMC’ and marketed the group as “Run–D.M.C.,” a name which, incidentally, the group hated at first. DMC said later, “We wanted to be the Dynamic Two, the Treacherous Two — when we heard that shit, we was like, ‘We’re gonna be ruined!'”

1981 — Sonic Youth: Singer Thurston Moore came up with the name shortly before one of the band’s earliest performances, combining the names of Fred “Sonic” Smith, guitarist of the band MC5, with that of reggae artist Big Youth.

1981 — Suicidal Tendencies: A crossover thrash band from Los Angeles.

1981 — Tears for Fears: An English new wave band. The band’s name was inspired by primal therapy, developed by the American psychologist Arthur Janov, which gained tremendous publicity after John Lennon became Janov’s patient in 1970. The name comes directly from a line in Janov’s book Prisoners of Pain. In a 2004 interview with VH1 UK, band founders Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith said that when they finally met Janov in the mid-1980s, they were disillusioned to find that he had become quite “Hollywood” and wanted the band to write a musical for him.

1981 — The Dream Syndicate: Drummer Dennis Duck suggested the name The Dream Syndicate in reference to Tony Conrad’s early 1960s New York experimental ensemble the Theatre of Eternal Music, nicknamed The Dream Syndicate, whose members included John Cale.

1982 — Everything But The Girl: Tracey Thorn and Ben Watt adopted the name “Everything but the Girl” from the slogan used by the shop Turner’s Furniture. The store originally built a window sign which read, “for your bedroom needs, we sell everything but the girl.”

1982 — Flag of Convenience: A rock group formed by former Buzzcocks members Steve Diggle and John Maher, along with bassist Dave Farrow.

1982 — Public Enemy: Chuck D put out a mix tape called Public Enemy #1 because he felt like he was being persecuted by people in the local music scene.

1982 — Swans: Frontman Michael Gira wanted a name that was in total contrast to the brutally abrasive music the band was playing in its early days.

1982 — The Jazz Butcher Conspiracy: Also known as The Jazz Butcher, and The Jazz Butcher And His Sikkorskis From Hell.

1982 — The Pogues: Originally called Póg mo Thóin — Irish for “Kiss my arse.” Shortened to The Pogues after complaints received by the BBC.

1982 — The Smiths: The band picked their name in part as a reaction against those used by synthpop bands of the early 1980s, such as Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and Spandau Ballet, which they considered pretentious. In a 1984 interview Morrissey said that he chose The Smiths “because it was the most ordinary name” and because he thought that it was “time that the ordinary folk of the world showed their faces.”

1982 — They Might Be Giants: The name was a prospective name for a ventriloquist act that a friend of the band was putting together. The ventriloquist friend got the name from a 1971 movie of the same name starring George C. Scott. In the film, George C. Scott plays a man who believes he is Sherlock Holmes; his psychiatrist (last name “Watson”) goes along with him in search of Moriarty. When asked in an interview whether the name came from a ventriloquist act or the movie, band co-founder John Flansburgh said, “Both! Our ventriloquist friend had a list of names for his act and They Might Be Giants was one on the list, so we asked if we could appropriate it.”

1983 — Art of Noise: Also known as The Art of Noise, they were an English avant-garde synthpop group. The group is perhaps best known for the international Top 20 singles “Kiss” and the instrumental “Peter Gunn,” the latter of which won a 1986 Grammy Award. Ex-NME journalist Paul Morley joined the band in February, 1983, as a non-instrument-playing provider of concepts, art direction and marketing ideas. Morley came up with the name (taken from the essay “The Art of Noises” by noted Italian futurist Luigi Russolo, and finalized at band programmer J. J. Jeczalik’s request by dropping the final ‘s’). Much later, in a July 2002 article penned for The Guardian, Morley wrote “I loved the name Art of Noise so much that I forced my way into the group. If over the years people asked me what I did in the group, I replied that I named them, and it was such a great name, that was enough to justify my role. I was the Ringo Starr of Art of Noise. I made the tea. Oh, and I wrote the lyrics to one of the loveliest pieces of pop music ever, Moments in Love.”

1983 — Camper Van Beethoven: Originally called Camper Van Beethoven and the Border Patrol.

1983 — Guided By Voices: An American indie rock band originating from Dayton, Ohio.

1983 — Inspiral Carpets: The name was taken from a clothing store outside Manchester.

1983 — Killdozer: Took their name from a 1974 TV movie, directed by Jerry London, which was based on a short story by Theodore Sturgeon.

1983 — My Bloody Valentine: Named after a horror film.

1983 — The Flaming Lips: “Back in 1983 when we were approaching our first gig,” recalls frontman Wayne Coyne, “we really didn’t know what we were gonna be called. It was still sort of the punk era back then, but we didn’t want to be called something too political like the Dead Kennedys. I’d read somewhere about a group called the Flaming Hands, which was a name I’d liked and that led to the Flaming Lips. But I’ve had a lot of people come up to me and tell me that they really know where the name comes from. Some folks have told me that I got the name from an old Fred Astaire musical that it supposedly shows up in. Others said we took it from a quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Nope, it happened like I said it did. I even remember making a flyer for the show where I cut out a picture of a woman with her legs spread and put a mouth over her, uh, parts — so there was this idea of a throbbing orifice. It just proves that if a man is completely left to his own devices, he’ll always go straight for vaginas.”

1983 — The Jesus and Mary Chain: A Scottish alternative rock band formed in East Kilbride. Originally called The Poppy Seeds, and then Death of Joey, they initially told journalists that they had taken their eventual name from a line in a Bing Crosby film, although six months later they admitted that this wasn’t true. Other accounts suggest that the name derived from an offer on a breakfast cereal packet, where customers could send off for “a gold Jesus & Mary chain.”

1983 — The Melvins: Named after a supervisor at a Thriftway in Montesano, Washington, where lead singer Roger Osborne also worked as a clerk. “Melvin” was despised by other employees, and the band’s members felt it to be an appropriately ridiculous name.

1983 — The Waterboys: Inspired by Lou Reed’s song “The Kids”: “…And I am the water boy, the real game’s not over here / But my heart is overflowin’ anyway / I’m just a tired man, no words to say.”

1983 — The Wolfgang Press: Spin magazine said the band claimed to have named themselves after a device that Mozart tried (unsuccessfully) to invent to type out his music (no such device exists.) Band member Michael Allen has said that the name was chosen to be “meaningless and open to interpretation.”

1983 — This Mortal Coil: From a line in Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, when we have shuffled off this mortal coil, must give us pause.”

1983 — Throwing Muses: The band was formed by Kristin Hersh and her stepsister Tanya Donelly. They initially called themselves “Kristin Hersh and the Muses.”

1984 — Big Audio Dynamite: The band was formed by Mick Jones of The Clash. Later known as Big Audio Dynamite II and Big Audio, and often abbreviated BAD.

1984 — Dinosaur Jr.: Originally called Dinosaur until legal issues forced a name revision.

1984 — Fine Young Cannibals: Inspired by the 1960 movie All the Fine Young Cannibals directed by Michael Anderson.

1984 — The Bad Seeds: The band was originally called Nick Cave and the Cavemen, which they used for the first six months of their career. However, they were later renamed Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds.

1984 — Yo La Tengo: The name came from a baseball anecdote. During the 1962 season, New York Mets center fielder Richie Ashburn and Venezuelan shortstop Elio Chacón found themselves colliding in the outfield. When Ashburn went for a catch, he would scream, “I got it! I got it!” only to run into Chacón, who spoke only Spanish. Ashburn learned to yell, “¡Yo la tengo! ¡Yo la tengo!” instead. In a later game, Ashburn happily saw Chacón backing off. He relaxed, positioned himself to catch the ball, and was instead run over by left fielder Frank Thomas, who understood no Spanish and had missed a team meeting that proposed using the words “¡Yo la tengo!” as a way to avoid outfield collisions. After getting up, Thomas asked Ashburn, “What the hell is a Yellow Tango?”

1985 — A Tribe Called Quest: Created by friends the band members knew from school who were inspired by the hip-hop band Jungle Brothers.

1985 — Bongwater: A psych rock band founded by Ann Magnuson and Mark Kramer formerly of the band Pulsallama.

1985 — Giant Sand: The name is shortened from the original Giant Sandworms, a reference to the creatures in the Dune books

1985 — Guns n’ Roses: Originally two bands, L.A. Guns and Hollywood Rose. Hollywood Rose was headed by Axl Rose and Izzy Stradlin, Tracii Guns headed L.A. Guns. Slash was in another band, Black Sheep, which had the same agent as Rose’s.

1985 — Radiohead: An English rock band from Abingdon, Oxfordshire. Originally known as “On a Friday,” the band was given two weeks after signing to Parlophone to change their name. The band renamed themselves after the 1986 Talking Heads song “Radio Head” on the album True Stories, claiming it as the “least annoying song” from the album.

1985 — The Soup Dragons: A Scottish alternative rock band. Named after a character in the 1970s children’s television show Clangers named the Soup Dragon, who would harvest Green Soup from a volcano.

1985 — Urge Overkill: From a song by the funk band Parliament.

1986 — Boards of Canada: The band, commonly abbreviated BoC, are a Scottish electronic music duo consisting of brothers Michael Sandison and Marcus Eoin. They named themselves after the National Film Board of Canada, which produced films that they saw as children.

1986 — Cowboy Junkies: Chosen randomly as they approached their first performance.

1986 — Green Day: “Green day” is a slang term for spending a day smoking pot.

1986 — Lambchop: Originally called Posterchild, and after rejecting the names REN, Pinnacles of Cream, and Turd Goes Back, the band settled on Lambchop.

1986 — Manic Street Preachers: While busking one day, singer James Dean Bradfield got into an altercation with someone who asked him, “What are you, boyo, some kind of manic street preacher?”

1986 — Pixies: Guitarist Joey Santiago selected the word “pixies” randomly from a dictionary and took a liking to how it looked and its definition as “mischievous little elves.”

1986 — The Downer Party: A San Francisco-based indie rock band.

1986 — Toad the Wet Sprocket: An American alternative rock band. Their name was taken from a fictional band mentioned in a Monty Python sketch called “Rock Notes” [see “Bonus” link, bottom]. A “journalist” (Eric Idle) reports that, “Rex Stardust, lead electric triangle with Toad the Wet Sprocket, has had to have an elbow removed following their recent successful worldwide tour of Finland.”

1986 — Trashcan Sinatras: Derived from a school music class, where students improvised on various “instruments.” After banging on some trash cans, someone mentioned Frank Sinatra and the band’s name was born.

1986 — Widespread Panic: Due to anxiety problems, lead guitarist Mike Houser used to have the nickname “Panic.” One day he came home and announced that he didn’t want to be just “Panic” anymore, but preferred to be called “Widespread Panic.”

1987 — Autechre: An English electronic music duo consisting of Rob Brown and Sean Booth. Booth and Brown pronounce the name Autechre with a Rochdale accent (/ɔːˈtɛkər/ aw-tek-ər). However, they have explained that the name can be pronounced in any way one sees fit. Booth explains: “The first two letters were intentional, because there was an ‘au’ sound in the track, and the rest of the letters were bashed randomly on the keyboard. We had this track title for ages, and we had written it on a cassette, with some graphics. It looked good, and we began using it as our name.”

1987 — Alice in Chains: An American rock band formed in Seattle, Washington, by guitarist and songwriter Jerry Cantrell and original lead vocalist Layne Staley. The band’s name was originally spelt Alice N’ Chainz. Staley sheds some light on the subject in a Rolling Stone article (11-26-92): “The name came from a side project of my old group. We were going to have this band that dressed up in drag and played heavy metal as a joke.”

1987 — Ultra Vivid Scene: Former Nothing But Happiness and Crash guitarist Kurt Ralske formed the Ultra Vivid Scene.

1988 — Crash Test Dummies: Suggested by a friend who was in medical school after the “diagnostic mannequin,” known colloquially as a crash test dummy.

1988 — Massive Attack: When asked in an interview if it wasn’t odd that a peacemaker, such as himself, would have such an aggressive name for a band, Robert “3D” Del Naja replied: “Yes it’s amusing, and perhaps a little unfortunate. But Massive Attack derives from a groovy warehouse party in Bristol of which we were quite fond.”

1988 — Mudhoney: From the film Mudhoney by Russ Meyer, noted for casting women with abnormally large breasts.

1988 — Nine Inch Nails: Trent Reznor said in 1994 that he coined the name Nine Inch Nails because it “abbreviated easily,” rather than for “any literal meaning.” Other rumored explanations have circulated, alleging that Reznor chose to reference Jesus’ crucifixion with nine-inch spikes, or Freddy Krueger’s nine-inch fingernails.

1988 — Smashing Pumpkins: An American alternative rock band from Chicago, Illinois. Frontman Billy Corgan had come up with this name as a joke years before the band had ever formed. Whenever people asked if he was in a band, he would tell them it was called Smashing Pumpkins for a laugh. The name stuck after the band formed, despite dissension from fellow band members.

1988 — The Brian Jonestown Massacre: A portmanteau of The Rolling Stones’ founder and guitarist Brian Jones and the infamous mass cult suicide in Jonestown, Guyana.

1988 — The Future Sound of London: Often abbreviated to FSOL, they are a British electronic music band composed of Garry Cobain (sometimes styled as Gaz Cobain) and Brian Dougans.

1988 — The Orb: An English electronic music group known for spawning the ambient house genre.

1989 — Daisy Chainsaw: An alternative rock band from England.

1989 — Golden Smog: The group took their name from a nickname given to Fred Flintstone in The Flintstones episode “Hot Lips Hannigan,” which, in turn, was a parody of singer Mel Tormé’s nickname, “The Velvet Fog.”

1989 — Hole: Courtney Love originally wanted to name the band Sweet Baby Crystal Powered by God, but opted for the name Hole instead. During an interview, Love claimed the name for the band was inspired by a quote from Euripides’ Medea which read, “there’s a hole that pierces my soul.”

1989 — Insane Clown Posse: From a dream of a clown running around in Delray, Michigan.

1989 — Magnetic Fields: Named after the André Breton / Philippe Soupault novel Les Champs Magnétiques.

1989 — Marilyn Manson: Brian Hugh Warner’s stage name was formed by juxtaposing the names of two American cultural icons, the actress Marilyn Monroe and serial killing Manson Family leader Charles Manson.

1989 — Neutral Milk Hotel: An indie rock band formed in Ruston, Louisiana, by singer, guitarist, and songwriter Jeff Mangum.

1989 — Superchunk: Initially, the band went by the name Chunk, after original drummer Chuck Garrison’s name was misspelled as “Chunk” Garrison in the phone book, and the moniker stuck, and they released their first single as Chunk. After that they added the “Super” prefix to their name to avoid confusion with a similarly named jazz band.

1989 — The Pharcyde: An American alternative hip hop group from South Central Los Angeles.

1989 — The Wallflowers: Originally called The Apples. The Wallflowers are a rock band fronted by singer-songwriter Jakob Dylan.

1990 — 7 Year Bitch: Named after the movie The Seven Year Itch.

1990 — Bikini Kill: Fellow “riot grrrl” musician Lois Maffeo originally adopted Bikini Kill as a band name, inspired by the 1967 B-movie The Million Eyes of Sumuru. She and her friend Margaret Doherty used the name for a one-off performance in the late 1980s where they donned faux fur punk cave girl costumes. Vail liked the name and appropriated it after Maffeo settled on the band name Cradle Robbers.

1990 — Blind Melon: (Stylized as BLind MeLoN) An American rock band formed in Los Angeles, California. Their moniker derived from a nickname Smith had observed among Mississippi hippies, a name with precedent in the 1920s blues artist Blind Lemon Jefferson (see 1900, above) and the Cheech and Chong character Blind Melon Chitlin.

1990 — Breadwinner: A progressive metal / math rock outfit from Richmond, Virginia.

1990 — Flop: Never intending to actually become a real band they toyed with many self-deprecating names including “Butt Sweat and Tears” and “The Value Village People”. Eventually however they lied their way into a show and needed an official name and inspired by the headline for a review of a local play in the newspaper “Resounding Flop” was shortened to “Flop”.

1990 — Opeth: A Swedish heavy metal band from Stockholm. Their name was derived from the word “Opet,” taken from the Wilbur Smith novel Sunbird. In this novel, Opet is the name of a (fictional) Phoenician city in South Africa whose name is translated as “City of the Moon” in the book.

1990 — Pearl Jam: In an early promotional interview, Eddie Vedder said that the name “Pearl Jam” was a reference to his great-grandmother Pearl, who was married to a Native American and had a special recipe for peyote-laced jam. In a 2006 Rolling Stone cover story however, Vedder admitted that this story was “total bullshit,” even though he indeed had a great-grandma named Pearl. Bass player Jeff Ament and guitarist Mike McCready explained that Ament came up with “pearl,” and that the band later settled on “Pearl Jam” after attending a concert by Neil Young, in which he extended his songs as improvisations of 15–20 minutes in length.

1990 — Smog: The stage name for singer-songwriter Bill Callahan.

1990 — Stereolab: The group’s name was taken from a division of Vanguard Records demonstrating hi-fi effects.

1990 — The Breeders: Slang for heterosexuals.

1990 — Tool: Maynard James Keenan gave a direct explanation of his band’s name in an interview in 1994: “Tool is exactly what it sounds like: It’s a big dick. It’s a wrench. It’s also what it sounds like: It’s a verb, it’s a digging factor. It’s an active process of searching, as in use us, we are a shovel, we are the match, we’re the blotter of acid, your tool; use us as a catalyst in your process of finding out whatever it is you need to find out, or whatever it is you’re trying to achieve.” Tool drummer Danny Carey alleged that the name Tool means that the band served its fans as a tool through which they would come to understand the concept of lachrymology, the study of crying as therapy.

1990 — United Future Organization: A nu-jazz trio, also known as UFO.

1991 — Aphex Twin: “Aphex” is derived from Aphex Systems Limited, a brand of audio signal processing equipment used by Richard D. James, according to the liner notes of the band’s “Richard D. James” and “Drukqs” albums. “Twin” comes from James’ brother who died before he was born. They shared the same first name. His memorial stone appears on the cover of the Boy/Girl EP.

1991 — Belly: Founding member Tanya Donelly named the band “Belly” because she thought the word was “both pretty and ugly.”

1991 — Cake: An American alternative rock band from Sacramento, California. Rather than referring to the foodstuff, the name Cake is meant to be, “like when something insidiously becomes a part of your life…[we] mean it more as something that cakes onto your shoe and is just sort of there until you get rid of it.”

1991 — Luscious Jackson: Inspired by retired basketball player Lucious Jackson.

1991 — Portishead: After the English town of Portishead, Somerset.

1991 — Rage Against The Machine: The name of a song Zack de la Rocha had written for his old band, Inside Out.

1991 — The Clientele: A London-based Indie pop band.

1991 — The Dust Brothers: A British electronic music duo composed of Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons, also known as The 237 Turbo Nutters, Chemical Ed & Chemical Tom, and The Chemical Brothers.

1991 — The Mountain Goats: An American indie folk rock band formed in Claremont, California. They took their name from the 1957 Screamin’ Jay Hawkins song “Yellow Coat,” which contains the lines, “Fifty million bulldogs / Twenty mountain goats, / All gathered ’round at sundown / To see my yellow coat.”

1991 — Thee Michelle Gun Elephant: Originated when a friend mispronounced the title of an early jam session recording, which featured cover songs from The Damned’s album, “Machine Gun Etiquette.”

1992 — Da Bush Babees: A group of underground hip-hop artists loosely affiliated with the Native Tongues. The members of the group originally performed under the stage names Babe-B-Face Kaos (later Lee Majors), Mister Man (later Mr. Khaliyl, Lord Khaliyl) and Y-Tee (later Light).

1992 — Digable Planets: An American alternative hip hop trio based in Philadelphia.

1992 — Fugees: The band was initially named Tranzlator Crew. Th parents of three band members were refugees/evacuees, hence the name Fugees.

1992 — Hazel: An alternative rock band based in Portland.

1992 — L7: 1950s slang for somebody who is square or uncool. Imagine a “L” and a “7” shaped hands forming a square.

1992 — Moist: An alternative rock group.

1992 — Porno for Pyros: Perry Farrell named the band after viewing an ad for fireworks in a pornographic magazine.

1992 — The Apples in Stereo: A psychedelic pop band from Denver. The band’s original name, “The Apples,” was inspired by the Pink Floyd song “Apples and Oranges.” In 1994, with a significantly different lineup, the official name of the band gradually became “The Apples in Stereo,” with the “in stereo” usually somewhat under-emphasized, whether in lower-case or in parenthesis. Founder Robert Schneider described this in an interview: “It’s very clearcut, actually: we’re The Apples, the music’s in stereo. It’s not actually the band name – it’s a step back from it, a band name once removed. We’re The Apples, in stereo. Kind of like a TV show, ‘in stereo!’ That always seemed to be a really big deal, that it was in stereo.” McIntyre later remarked, “It’s cool the name changed cause the Apples and the Apples in Stereo were really two different entities.”

1992 — The Dirtbombs: A garage rock band from Detroit, Michigan.

1992 — Tindersticks: Originally called the Asphalt Ribbons, they changed their name to Tindersticks after lead singer Stuart Staples discovered a box of German matches on a Greek beach.

1992 — Wu-Tang Clan: RZA and Ol’ Dirty Bastard adopted the name for the rap group after seeing the Kung fu film Shaolin and Wu Tang, which features a school of warriors trained in Wu-Tang style.

1993 — Daft Punk: An electronic music duo consisting of French musicians Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter. In 1992, being heavily influenced by The Beach Boys, they recorded songs under the name Darlin’, which was a Beach Boys single off their 1967 album Wild Honey. A negative review in the UK’s Melody Maker described their effort as “a daft punky thrash,” which depressed the pair but unwittingly gave them a name for their next project.

1993 — Garbage: The band’s name came either from lead singer Shirley Manson’s father yelling down to the band at one of their basement practice sessions, “Play more quietly – you sound like garbage,” or from a friend of drummer Butch Vig, who said “This stuff sounds like garbage!”

1993 — Modest Mouse: Derived from a passage from the Virginia Woolf story “The Mark on the Wall,” which reads, “I wish I could hit upon a pleasant track of thought, a track indirectly reflecting credit upon myself, for those are the pleasantest thoughts, and very frequent even in the minds of modest, mouse-coloured people, who believe genuinely that they dislike to hear their own praises.”

1993 — Super Furry Animals: The name of the band came from T-shirts being printed by singer Gruff Rhys’ sister. She was making Super Furry Animals T-shirts for the fashion and music collective Acid Casuals, variants of whose name have appeared throughout SFA’s career – for example, in their song “The Placid Casual,” and their record label Placid Casual.

1993 — The Dismemberment Plan: A Washington D.C. based indie rock band, also known as D-Plan or The Plan, the band name comes from a stray phrase uttered by insurance salesman Ned Ryerson in the popular comedy Groundhog Day.

1993 — The Handsome Family: An alternative country and Americana duo consisting of husband and wife Brett and Rennie Sparks. Brett said in an interview: “It’s just kind of a stupid name. We used to have this really obnoxious drummer, and he used to call me “Handsome,” that was his nickname for me, I think for sarcastic reasons… And he wanted to call it the Handsome Family…and we thought it was funny, too. We thought it was a good name.”

1994 — Actionslacks: An indie rock band from the San Francisco Bay Area.

1994 — Godspeed You! Black Emperor: God Speed You! Black Emperor is a 1976 Japanese black-and-white 16 mm documentary film, 90 minutes long, by director Mitsuo Yanagimachi, which follows the exploits of a Japanese biker gang, the Black Emperors.

1994 — Mos Def: Yasiin Bey, born Dante Terrell Smith, is better known by his former stage name Mos Def. “Most definitely” is often erroneously presented as the origin of the name Mos Def. “Mos Def” refers instead to his belief that he is, in fact, the most “def” of all, “def” being old school slang for “groovy.”

1994 — Placebo: In an MTV interview, guitarist-bassist Stefan Olsdal remarked that the name Placebo was chosen because of its Latin origins; “placebo” literally translates from Latin to English as “to please.” Frequently in interviews, Molko has stated that the name is a satirical reflection of the 1990s cliche of naming one’s band after a drug. In an interview, Molko stated: “It’s a complex question to answer, really. As musicians you try to find a name for your band that represents you and you never really do, because, basically, names for bands lose their meaning after a while. They become a series of sounds that you associate with people in music. The most important thing for a name is that you can imagine forty-thousand people screaming it in unison.”

1994 — Sevendust: An American alternative metal band from Atlanta, Georgia. After discovering their name Crawlspace was already taken, band bassist Vinnie Hornsby renamed the band after a brand of plant pesticide he found in his grandmother’s garage named Sevin dust.

1994 — Sigur Rós: An Icelandic post-rock band from Reykjavík, named after the little sister of the band’s vocalist, Jón Þór Birgisson (Jónsi), whose name is Sigurrós (without a space), which translates to “victory rose.”

1994 — Sleater-Kinney: Derived from Sleater Kinney Road, Interstate 5 exit number 108 in Lacey, Washington, the location of one of their early practice spaces.

1994 — Smash Mouth: Smash Mouth (originally called Smashmouth) is an American rock band from San Jose, California. In football, a “smashmouth offense” is an offensive system that relies on a strong running game, where most of the plays run by the offense are hand-offs to the fullback or tailback.

1994 — Sneaker Pimps: They took their name from an article the Beastie Boys published in their Grand Royal magazine about a man they hired to track down classic sneakers.

1994 — Snow Patrol: Originally called Polar Bear, but that name was also used by a band fronted by Jane’s Addiction’s ex-bassist Eric Avery. A friend who misunderstood their name inadvertently provided them with a new name. Gary Lightbody explained in an interview: “…we had to change the name cause somebody else had the name Polar Bear and it was only by accident that we got the name Snow Patrol, just a friend of mine getting it wrong, calling us Snow Patrol when we were called Polar Bear.”

1994 — Son Volt: Drummer Mike Heidorn said in an interview, “Son Volt did not come from any hidden meaning or anything. Two words that didn’t really connotate anything when you put them together. Jay Farrar (Son Volt’s guitarist) just stuck them together and threw them out to us and we said ‘yeah.’ I was [sic] originally thought it was S-U-N. I liked it better with two Os.”

1994 — Tenacious D: At their first concert in Los Angeles, the duo of Jack Black and Kyle Gass gave the audience the chance to vote for their name among options that included Pets or Meat, Balboa’s Biblical Theatre, and The Axe Lords Featuring Gorgazon’s Mischief. “Tenacious D” — a basketball term used by commentators to describe a robust defensive — did not get the majority of votes, but, according to Black, “we forced it through.”

1994 — The Dandy Warhols: A play on American pop artist Andy Warhol’s name.

1994 — Wilco: Named after the military and commercial aviation radio voice abbreviation for “will comply,” a choice which frontman Jeff Tweedy has called, “fairly ironic for a rock band to name themselves.”

1995 — Air: A space rock duo from Versailles, France, consisting of Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel.

1995 — Arab Strap: The band named themselves after a sexual device called the Arab strap.

1995 — Badly Drawn Boy: Damon Gough chose his stage name from the title character of the TV show Sam and his Magic Ball.

1995 — Biffy Clyro: The first incarnation of what would eventually become Biffy Clyro, a Scottish rock band, was formed in 1995 when fifteen-year-old guitarist Simon Neil recruited drummer, vocalist and songwriter Ben Johnston. The band’s original name was Skrewfish. The band have never disclosed where the name Biffy Clyro originated, giving a series of stories as to how the name came about. Whilst being interviewed on Soccer AM, the band stated that they named themselves after a footballer called Biffy Clyro who played for Scottish side Ayr United, while also admitting that they make up stories about how they are named because they are bored with being asked the same question. Another story is that one of the members owned a Cliff Richard pen, i.e. “Cliffy Biro,” which was accidentally spoonerised on a drunken night out. Simon Neil appeared to confirm this as the real reason in a 2010 interview with Eve Jackson on France 24, and said that it was “a stupid name” that was often “awkward” to explain its origins when the band started and when not many had heard their music. Another interview claims that the name Biffy Clyro comes from an acronym for “Big Imagination For Feeling Young ‘Cos Life Yearns Real Optimism.” The band also state in an interview for BalconyTV that the band name was that of a Finnish footballer from the 17th century. On Off the Ball in August 2011, Ben Johnston claimed “Well it’s a marriage of two words: Biffy is in fact the nickname of the spy who the James Bond novels were based on and Clyro is a town in Wales where both our families…used to go on holiday.” In an episode of Music Choice’s “Pop Quiz,” Simon Neil explained that Biffy Clyro is the name of a Scotsman that built his own rocket and was the first man in space. “‘Mon the Biffy!” or, in more recent times, “‘Mon the Biff!,” are well known chants among Biffy fans, usually shouted in between songs at gigs, or before the band comes on stage.

1995 — Bright Eyes: The name is from the film Bright Eyes, which Connor Oberst saw on Turner Classic Movies. “Bright Eyes” was a term of endearment used in the movie.

1995 — Cat Power: Charlyn “Chan” Marshall began playing music in Atlanta with a collective of musicians made up of Glen Thrasher, Marc Moore, Damon Moore, and Fletcher Liegerot, who would get together for jam sessions in a basement. The group were booked for a show and had to come up with a name quickly, when a man walked through the door of the pizzeria where Marshall worked, wearing a Caterpillar trucker cap that read: “Cat Diesel Power.” Marshall immediately decided on Cat Power as the name of the band.

1995 — Cursive: An indie rock band from Omaha, Nebraska. The band’s name was inspired by a passage in a book by V. S. Naipaul, in which the British were forcing subjugated Indians to learn how to write English in cursive penmanship, symbolic of a pointless exercise with no value, and Kasher compares this to the band forcing music as a discipline, taking it seriously.

1995 — Five Iron Frenzy: (also known as Five Iron or FIF) A Christian ska band formed in Denver, Colorado. According to bassist Keith Hoerig: “We got the name Five Iron Frenzy from a roommate of most of ours. He was kind of paranoid, and afraid that if he went outside on this particular night he was going to get jumped by some people. He had a golf club to defend himself and he said something to the effect of it being like ‘putter mayhem.’ Scott [Kerr] looked at the golf club he was holding, and noting that it was a five iron said, ‘No, more like a Five Iron Frenzy.’ The name stuck.”

1995 — Idlewild: After a place in the children’s book Anne of Green Gables.

1995 — Matchbox Twenty: An American rock band, formed in Orlando, Florida. Originally titled “Matchbox 20,” the band took its name from a softball jersey with a “20” on it and a patch that had “Matchbox” written on it. The band altered its name to “Matchbox Twenty” after the release of its debut album Yourself or Someone Like You.

1995 — The Bruce Lee Band: Officially, the band is known as B. Lee Band to avoid legal complications with the estate of the late Bruce Lee.

1995 — Thievery Corporation: Formed at Washington D.C.’s Eighteenth Street Lounge. Rob Garza and Lounge co-owner Eric Hilton were drawn together over their mutual love of club life, as well as dub, bossa nova and jazz records.

1995 — Thingy: An indie rock band formed after the dissolution of Heavy Vegetable.

1996 — Belle and Sebastian: Inspired by a French children’s television series about a boy and his dog. The show was based on a series of French novels called Belle et Sébastien by Cécile Aubry.

1996 — Beta Band: Formed around St Andrews Scotland by musicians Steve Mason and Gordon Anderson. The two had plans to call their group The Pigeons but later changed their minds.

1996 — Calexico: Named for the border town of Calexico, California.

1996 — Carbon Based Lifeforms: Also known as CBL, they are a Swedish ambient music duo formed in Gothenburg, Sweden, by Johannes Hedberg and Daniel Segerstad.

1996 — Christ.: Christopher Horne, known on-stage as Christ., is a Scottish musician. He disclaims any religious meaning in the stage name; he describes it as short for his full name, and the full stop or period as indicating that status as an abbreviation.

1996 — Dead Air Fresheners: A Portland-based experimental and post-punk musical group.

1996 — Drive-By Truckers: An alternative country rock band based in Athens, Georgia.

1996 — Dropkick Murphys: Named after the wrestler and alcoholic rehabilitation facility operator John “Dropkick” Murphy.

1996 — Fatboy Slim: Norman Cook’s most famous stage name; others include Beats International, The Brighton Port Authority, Margret Scratcher, Mighty Gus Poyetz, Arthur Chubb, Slimboy Fat, and Biggie Slims.

1996 — Fountains of Wayne: The name is taken from that of a garden center in Wayne, New Jersey.

1996 — Of Montreal: Named after a failed romance between lead singer Kevin Barnes and a woman “of Montreal.”

1996 — Queens of the Stone Age: Originally naming his new project “Gamma Ray,” Josh Homme changed the name in 1997, as German power metal band Gamma Ray, who have been around since 1989, was threatening to sue. While recording under the band name Kyuss, their producer Chris Goss, would joke and say “You guys are like the queens of the stone age.”

1996 — The Mendoza Line: The name comes from the dismal .200 batting average of Mario Mendoza.

1996 — The Shins: An indie rock band founded James Mercer. Mercer named the band The Shins after the family in the musical The Music Man, a favorite of Mercer’s father.

1997 — Alien Crime Syndicate: A space rock from San Francisco,

1997 — American Football: A rock band from Champaign-Urbana, Illinois.

1997 — Atombombpocketknife: An indie band from Chicago.

1997 — Death Cab for Cutie: An American alternative rock band, formed in Bellingham, Washington. Named for the song “Death Cab for Cutie,” composed by Vivian Stanshall and Neil Innes, and performed by the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band on their 1967 album Gorilla.

1997 — Interpol: Before deciding upon the name Interpol, the band considered Las Armas and The French Letters. They also performed a secret show at Luna Lounge in New York under the pseudonym Cuddleworthy.

1997 — The White Stripes: Jack White explained the band name’s origin this way: “Meg loves peppermints, and we were going to call ourselves The Peppermints. But since our last name was White, we decided to call it The White Stripes. It revolved around this childish idea, the ideas kids have—because they are so much better than adult ideas, right?”

1998 — 50 Cent: 50 Cent is the stage name for Curtis James Jackson III. The name was derived from Kelvin Martin, a 1980s Brooklyn robber known as “50 Cent” because he was very short and would rob anyone, no matter how much money they had.

1998 — Black Rebel Motorcycle Club: Originally called The Elements. After discovering that another band had the same name, the members changed the name to Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, after Marlon Brando’s motorcycle gang in the 1953 film The Wild One.

1998 — Bonnie “Prince” Billy: Will Oldham, better known by the stage name Bonnie “Prince” Billy, is an American singer-songwriter and actor. From 1993 to 1997, he performed and recorded under variations of the Palace name, including the Palace Brothers, Palace Songs, and Palace Music. After releasing material under his own name, in 1998 he adopted the “Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy” moniker, which draws inspiration from several sources: Said Oldham in an interview in The Phoenix: “Yeah, the name has so many different references that it could almost have a life of its own. Bonnie Prince Charlie has such a beautiful ring to it, and I was very conscious of appropriating that mellifluous sound. And I was also thinking about the name Nat King Cole. But it wasn’t until later, and this may have been subconscious, that I remembered that Billy the Kid was William Bonney or Billy Bonney.”

1998 — My Morning Jacket: According Jim James, he was exploring the remains of an old bar. “It was soooo creepy,” he writes. “There were half-burned pool tables and cigarette machines . . . I followed one beam of light over into a corner where there was a ripped-up poster of a girl wearing a robe with the initials ‘MMJ.’ It probably meant ‘Mean Michelle Jackson’ or ‘My Magic Johnson,’ but I took it to mean ‘My Morning Jacket.'”

1998 — OK Go: A power pop band from Chicago.

1998 — Ray’s Vast Basement: Jon Bernson is an American singer, songwriter and recordist from San Francisco, California. For ten years, Bernson led the indie-folk band Ray’s Vast Basement and developed a multimedia approach that is frequently referred to as “musical fiction.” Early Ray’s Vast Basement performances began in 1999 as a one-man show that incorporated music, sound design, video, storytelling, dance and tableau vivant. Subsequent shows added a full band that toured the United States numerous times in support of two cassette releases and three full-length CD’s. In addition to his recording efforts, Bernson also penned a short book that details a fictional mythology behind his creations.

1998 — Supreme Beings of Leisure: An electronic/trip hop band from Los Angeles.

1998 — The Impossible Shapes: An independent rock band from Bloomington, Indiana.

1998 — Thirty Seconds To Mars: (commonly stylized as 30 Seconds to Mars) An American rock band from Los Angeles, California, which began as a collaboration between brothers Jared Leto and Shannon Leto, who had been playing music together since their childhood. The duo later expanded into a four-five member band. The band played its first concerts under different names, before finally settling on the name “Thirty Seconds to Mars,” which they claim was taken from a rare manuscript titled Argus Apocraphex, but that is unsubstantiated. The manuscript has been referred to elsewhere as the thesis of an ex-professor at Harvard. Jared Leto spoke of the name as “a reference, a rough translation from the book. I think the idea is interesting, it’s a metaphor for the future,” he explained. “Thirty seconds to Mars—the fact that we’re so close to something that’s not a tangible idea. Also Mars being the God of War makes it really interesting, as well. You could substitute that in there, but what’s important for my brother and I, is that it be imaginative and really represent the sound of our music in as unique a way as possible.” He described it as a name that “works on several different levels, a phrase that is lyrical, suggestive, cinematic, and filled with immediacy.” When Thirty Seconds to Mars first started, Jared Leto did not allow his vocation as a Hollywood actor to be used in promotion of the band.

1999 — Broken Social Scene: Co-founder Kevin Drew tells the story of the band’s name: “I went on tour, like, ten years ago playing keyboards for a friend’s band, and I had this really elaborate set-up with lots of different keyboards. I was a keyboard freak back then. When the tour was over, I came back to Toronto and played a Sunday night show under the name John Tesh Jr. and the Broken Social Scene. The John Tesh Jr. part was because of the keyboards. The Broken Social Scene part just sort of popped into my head, I think. But (future BSS bandmate) Brendan (Canning) said that the Broken Social Scene was a great name for a band and that’s what we went with. A writer friend of mine told me to drop ‘the,’ though, and just have it be Broken Social Scene.”

1999 — Evergreen Terrace: A four-piece American melodic hardcore/metalcore band from Jacksonville, Florida. Named after 742 Evergreen Terrace, the address of the Simpsons.

1999 — Explosions in the Sky: An American post-rock band from Texas. The quartet originally played under the name Breaker Morant.

1999 — Dashboard Confessional: An emo band from Boca Raton, Florida.

1999 — Gnarls Barkley: Brian Joseph Burton, better known by as Danger Mouse, explains that the name Gnarls Barkley came from “fictional celebrity names like Prince Gnarls and Bob Gnarley” (parodies of Prince Charles and Bob Marley, respectively) made up by their friends. When Heavens band member Josiah Steinbrick came up with “Gnarls Barkley,” a parody of basketball star Charles Barkley, Burton wrote it down. In fact, early in their career, various radio DJs incorrectly attributed their songs to the basketball star instead of the band.

1999 — Jennifer Gentle: An Italian psychedelic rock band. The band’s name derives from a verse of the early Pink Floyd song “Lucifer Sam,” by Syd Barrett: “Jennifer Gentle you’re a witch / You’re the left side / He’s the right side / Oh, no!”

1999 — Kings of Convenience: An indie folk-pop duo from Bergen, Norway.

1999 — Ladytron: An electronic band formed in Liverpool. Name comes from the song “Ladytron” by Roxy Music.

1999 — Norfolk & Western: An indie folk/rock band from Portland, Oregon.

1999 — Preston School of Industry: Named after a reform school in Ione, California.

1999 — Sleepytime Gorilla Museum: An experimental rock band from Oakland, California.

1999 — The National: An indie rock band formed in Cincinnati and currently based in Brooklyn. They named their band The National because they wanted something meaningless and benign. It turned out to be a bit of a mistake because no one could find their website. So they named their website AmericanMary.com but, of course, no one knows to look for them there.

1999 — The New Pornographers: Chosen by Carl Newman, who said he came up with it after watching a Japanese film called The Pornographers. Many writers have assumed that the name was a reference to Jimmy Swaggart’s claim that rock and roll was “the new pornography.”

2000 — Animal Collective: An experimental band originally from Baltimore, Maryland.

2000 — British Sea Power: An indie band based in Brighton, East Sussex, England.

2000 — Department of Eagles: Originally called Whitey on the Moon UK (from the classic Gil Scott-Heron poem, “Whitey on the Moon”). However, to avoid a dispute with a San Francisco-based band of the same name they changed their name to “Department of Eagles” before the release of their debut full-length CD.

2000 — Fiery Furnaces: From a line in the 1968 kids’ musical Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. The children in the movie ask their father to save the car from the “fiery furnace.”

2000 — Kaiser Chiefs: An English indie rock band from Leeds who formed in 2000 as Parva, releasing one studio album in 2003, before renaming and establishing themselves in their current name that same year. The new name was taken from South African football club Kaizer Chiefs, the first club of Lucas Radebe, a former captain of Leeds United, the team they all supported. The Kaizer Chiefs football club was founded in 1970 shortly after the return of Kaizer “Chincha Guluva” Motaung from the United States where he played as a striker for the Atlanta Chiefs of the North American Soccer League (NASL). He combined his own first name with the Atlanta Chiefs to create the name of Kaizer Chiefs.

2000 — Kings of Leon: The group is composed of the three Followill brothers (and a cousin). The brothers, Nathan, Caleb, and Jared, took the “Leon” part of their name from their eponymous father and grandfather.

2000 — Loincloth: A heavy metal band whose members hail from Raleigh, North Carolina, and Richmond, Virginia.

2000 — The Boat People: An Australian four-piece indie pop band.

2000 — The Decemberists: Refers to the 1825 Decembrist revolt in Imperial Russia.

2000 — The Polyphonic Spree: Bandleader Tim DeLaughter knew he wanted to form a huge, symphonic pop band, but he was stuck for a name. A fan of the old Wacky Pack stickers, he had a framed set on the wall. Staring at it, he was inspired by “Polly Dent” (parrot toothpaste). The rest of the name came to him effortlessly.

2000 — The Walkmen: An indie rock, post-punk revival band.

2000 — Yeah Yeah Yeahs: Taken from modern New York City street vernacular.

2001 — Arcade Fire: When asked about the rumor that the band’s name refers to a fire in an arcade, Win Butler replied: “It’s not a rumor, it’s based on a story that someone told me. It’s not an actual event, but one that I took to be real. I would say that it’s probably something that the kid made up, but at the time I believed him.”

2001 — Bear vs. Shark: A post-hardcore band from Highland, Michigan. Though it has been circulated that the band’s name comes from the shape of Michigan, Guitarist John Gaviglio has said in an interview that they believed it was “super badass and sounded interesting.”

2001 — Fall Out Boy: An American rock band formed in Wilmette, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. Nameless for their first two shows as a band, at the end of their second show they asked the audience to yell out their ideas for a name. One audience member suggested “Fallout Boy,” a reference to the sidekick of comic book superhero Radioactive Man from The Simpsons.

2001 — Morningwood: An alternative rock band from New York City, their self-titled debut album was produced by Gil Norton, known for his work with Pixies, the Foo Fighters, and Echo & the Bunnymen. Lead singer Claret is famous for commanding audience members at concerts to take off their clothes, typically when the song “Take Off Your Clothes” is performed. A spectator will often climb on the stage and strip.

2001 — My Chemical Romance: The name came from Irvine Welsh’s Five Tales of Chemical Romance. Vocalist Gerard Way added the “My” to make the name more personal. It is also said to have been inspired from shoegaze band My Bloody Valentine.

2001 — Quantic: William Holland is a musician, DJ and record producer from Bewdley, Worcestershire, England. He is based in Colombia, and records under various guises, notably, Quantic, The Quantic Soul Orchestra, and The Limp Twins. His music draws upon elements of cumbia, salsa, bossa nova, soul, funk and jazz. Holland plays guitars, bass, double bass, piano, organ, saxophone, accordion and percussion. Much of his sound is original composition with little in the way of sampling of other artists’ material.

2001 — The Mars Volta: Vocalist Cedric Bixler-Zavala stated in an interview: “The Volta is taken from a Federico Fellini book about his films, what he characterizes as a changing of scene, or a turnaround; a new scene to him is called Volta. Y’know, changing of time and the changeover. And Mars, we’re just fascinated by science fiction so and it’s something that ultimately looked as in anything I write, its meaning is always up to the listener. As the way we write songs and words, if it looks great on paper then to us it’s like painting, so if it looks good meaning the second then people usually have a better interpretation than we ever would.”

2001 — The Postal Service: An American indie band from Los Angeles, California. The name was chosen because of the band’s production method: producer Jimmy Tamborello would mail raw versions to vocalist Ben Gibbard, who would edit them and mail them back through the United States Postal Service.

2001 — TV on the Radio: An indie rock band from Brooklyn, New York.

2001 — Wax Tailor: The stage name of Jean-Christophe Le Saoût, a French trip hop/hip hop producer. After being a host on a French radio in the Paris suburb of Mantes-La-Jolie, Le Saoût started the French Rap band La Formule in the 1990s. He created his label Lab’Oratoire in 1998 and produced records from La Formule as well as Break Beat compilations and a collaboration with the Swedish band Looptroop. He began work on the Wax Tailor project in 2001, first appearing on a remix of Looptroop & La Formule’s “Deep Under Water.” Here are some lines from the Wax Tailor song, “House of Wax,” that illuminates the band’s name: “Sewn to perfection / Threading through your section / Tailor made tracks / In the house of wax.”

2002 — Akron/Family: A folk-influenced experimental rock band formed in Brooklyn, New York. Contrary to expectations, there are actually no familial connections within the group to the city of Akron, Ohio. Said guitarist Ryan Vanderhoof, “Akron just seemed like a catchy name, and when we began corresponding with Michael Gira at Young God Records, he assumed we were called Akron/Family based on our e-mail address. When he saw us play and found out we were actually called Akron, he said he thought Akron/Family made for a much better band name. After much argument er, discussion, we went with it.”

2002 — Arctic Monkeys: The name was made up by the guitarist, Jamie Cook, while at school.

2002 — Franz Ferdinand: Named for the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand, whose assassination in Sarajevo in 1914 precipitated the First World War.

2002 — Grizzly Bear: Began as a moniker for songwriter Ed Droste’s music in the early 2000s. Regarding the band’s origins as a solo project, Droste noted, “It was just like doing a little home project, and I thought ‘oh, this is fun, I’m just going to call this stuff Grizzly Bear. Our name was actually just a nickname for an old boyfriend of mine.'”

2002 — Horsell Common: Named after a place near a village in Surrey, England, and tht setting for H. G. Wells’s War of the Worlds.

2002 — Iron and Wine: The stage and recording name of Samuel “Sam” Beam. “Back in ’98 or so when I was in film school I was working on lighting for a movie in Georgia, out in the middle of nowhere at a gas station,” recalls songwriter-mastermind Sam Beam. “Inside the gas station they had a bunch of old home remedies like castor oil, and one of them was a protein supplement called Beef, Iron & Wine. I just dropped the Beef part. I recognized that a lot in my writing I’m trying to show both sides of the coin — the sour and sweet. Iron & Wine seemed to fit with that duality and I thought it would be more interesting to call the project that rather than use Sam Beam. I never tried the stuff, though. Hell no. Someone told me that I should try and get sponsoring. So if they’re reading….”

2002 — Parts & Labor: An experimental rock/noise rock band from Brooklyn.

2002 — Psapp: A San Francisco-based experimental electronica band consisting of Carim Clasmann and Galia Durant. The band are sometimes credited with inventing a musical style known as toytronica, a form of electronica made with toys and toy instruments (the band uses toy guitars, flutes, and a chicken they named Brunhilda). Psapp are known for their humor on stage, throwing toy cats (hand-made by the band) into the audience.

2002 — Rogue Wave: An indie rock band from Oakland, California, headed by Zach Schwartz (a.k.a. Zach Rogue), who created the band after losing his job in the dot-com bust.

2002 — Silversun Pickups: Originally named A Couple of Couples, as the original line-up was composed of a pair of romantically involved couples — lead guitarist Brian Aubert was dating drummer Elvira Gonzales, while bassist Nikki Monninger was dating rhythm guitarist Jack Kennedy. After Gonzales and Kennedy left the band and Guanlao and Lester joined, the group changed their name to Silversun Pickups, which was derived from a liquor store located across from the Silverlake Lounge. One of the friends would often arrive at the store late at night to buy liquor, and would be as such making a “Silversun Pickup.” In interviews, the band has said their name is more of “a state of mind.”

2002 — Sun Kil Moon: Named after the Korean lightweight boxer Sung-Kil Moon.

2002 — Two Gallants: The name comes from the title of a story by James Joyce in Dubliners.

2002 — Vetiver: The band is named after an aromatic East Indian grass that grows in California, and their music delivers on the sunny, hazy sweetness their name suggests.

2003 — A Place to Bury Strangers: The band, commonly known by the initials APTBS, play a heavy, atmospheric wall-of-sound-influenced blend of psychedelic rock, shoegaze and space rock.

2003 — All Time Low: The name came from the New Found Glory’s song, “Head On Collision.”

2003 — Frontier Ruckus: An jangle pop band from Michigan..

2003 — Babyshambles: Pete Doherty was banned from playing with the Libertines until he could overcome his substance abuse problems. As a response, Doherty formed an alternative band, and recruited former Libertine Steve Bedlow as vocalist. Initially, Doherty planned on calling his new band T’Libertines, because of the band’s Yorkshire connection — the line up of the band at the time consisted mainly of Yorkshiremen.

2003 — Great Lake Swimmers: A Canadian band built around the melodic folk rock songs of singer-songwriter Tony Dekker. Originally from Wainfleet, Ontario, the band is currently based in Toronto.

2003 — Heartless Bastards: Erika Wennerstrom doesn’t mind explaining her band’s name. As frontwoman for the Heartless Bastards, she’s heard plenty of misconceptions about her band, including that it’s a death metal group and a man-hating rock band. But behind the oft-misunderstood moniker lies an American rock outfit that takes on themes of love, life and heartache with heartland style and a bluesy, alt-country flair. And the name? It was an incorrect answer to the trivia question “What’s the name of Tom Petty’s band?” “I thought [the name] was really funny when I was younger,” Wennerstrom says from her home in Austin. “But I like when it’s explained now. Over the years people have thought any number of things about the band, but they didn’t quite know what to think of the name.”

2003 — St. Vincent: The stage name of Anne Erin “Annie” Clark, a singer-songwriter who began her music career as a member of The Polyphonic Spree. In an interview on The Colbert Report, Clark said that she “took [her] moniker from a Nick Cave song, which refers to the hospital in which Dylan Thomas died.” The reference is to the line, “And Dylan Thomas died drunk in / St. Vincent’s hospital,” from Cave’s song “There She Goes my Beautiful World” off the album Abattoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus. The name is also a reference to her great-grandmother, whose middle name was St. Vincent.

2003 — Trampled By Turtles: A folk-rock band from Duluth, Minnesota.

2003 — Tunng: An English folk music band. They are often associated with the folktronica genre, due to the electronic influences evident in some of their work.

2004 — Band of Horses: Band of Horses, originally known briefly as Horses, is a band from Seattle formed in 2004 by Ben Bridwell.

2004 — Beach House: A dream pop duo from Baltimore, Maryland, consisting of French-born Victoria Legrand and Baltimore native Alex Scally. Regarding the origins of the band name, Scally said: “We’d been writing music, and we had all these songs, and then there was that moment where you say ‘what do we call ourselves?’ We tried to intellectualize it, and it didn’t work. There were different plant-names, Wisteria, that kind of thing. Stupid stuff. But, once we stopped trying, it just came out, it just happened. And it just seemed perfect.”

2004 — Dirty South: The stage name for Serbian-Australian DJ, remixer, and producer Dragan Roganović.

2004 — Panic! at the Disco: Named after the Smiths song, “Panic,” which includes a line about burning down a disco (“Burn down the disco / Hang the blessed dj / Because the music that they constantly play / It says nothing to me about my life”).

2004 — Russian Circles: A three-piece instrumental band from Chicago. Their name is derived from a ice hockey practice drill.

2004 — The Kooks: The name is from the David Bowie song “Kooks” on the Hunky Dory album. Bowie wrote the song for his newborn son Duncan Jones.

2004 — The Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza: A mathcore band from Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

2004 — The Village Green: An indie band from Portland, Oregon.

2005 — +44: An American “alternative rock supergroup” formed in Los Angeles, California. Pronounced “plus forty four,” a reference to the international dialing code of the United Kingdom, where band members Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker first discussed the project.

2005 — Klaxons: Originally known as “Klaxons (Not Centaurs),” a quote from Filippo Tommaso Marinetti’s “The Futurist Manifesto.” Also, in an interview a band member stated, Klaxons “is to toot to be a loud intrusive noise to disrupt.”

2005 — The Devil Wears Prada: An American metalcore band from Dayton, Ohio. Named after the novel and comedy/drama movie of the same name.

2005 — The Raconteurs: The Raconteurs were renamed The Saboteurs for the Australian market when it was discovered that a Queensland band was already using the name Raconteurs. The Queensland band refused to give up their name for the amount of money they were offered, and instead asked for a higher price from The Raconteurs’ record company, who refused to pay the greater amount. A member of the Queensland band said that they had not been informed of who was trying to buy their name and asked for the larger sum of money to see what would happen.

2005 — The Tallest Man on Earth: The stage name for singer-songwriter Kristian Matsson.

2005 — Times New Viking: A lo-fi indie rock band from Columbus, Ohio, whose name is a play on the popular typeface Times New Roman.

2005 — The War On Drugs: Adam Granduciel and Kurt Vile began playing as The War on Drugs in 2005. Regarding the band’s name, Granduciel noted, “My friend Julian and I came up with it a few years ago over a couple bottles of red wine and a few typewriters when we were living in Oakland. We were writing a lot back then, working on a dictionary, and it just came out and we were like “hey, good band name” so eventually when I moved to Philadelphia and got a band together I used it. It was either that or The Rigatoni Danzas.”

2005 — Tokyo Police Club: An indie rock band based out of Newmarket, Ontario.

2006 — Infamous Stringdusters: A bluegrass jam band from Charlottesville.

2006 — She & Him: An American indie duo consisting of Zooey Deschanel and M. Ward.

2006 — The Antlers: The band’s name is taken from The Microphones’ song, “Antlers”.

2006 — The Shouting Matches: Bon Iver frontman Justin Vernon’s “ramshackle, Tom Petty-esque blues-rock trio.”

2006 — The Weather Station: A Canadian folk band fronted by Tamara Lindeman.

2007 — Bon Iver: The name is based on the French bon hiver, meaning “good winter,” but it’s not really French. Songwriter, singer, and founding member Justin Vernon explained the name in an interview with Pitchfork: “When I was living up north I wrote a letter. I’d come across a story about this Alaskan town that the people, the first snow of every year, they come out of their houses and gather in town square. They hug and kiss each other and they say “Bon Iver.” I was like, “whatever that is, that’s cool!” … Then I found out how it’s spelled and it was sort of disappointing. I didn’t like how it looked. It didn’t have any emotion. Looking at it didn’t make any sense. I wanted to look at it and feel something. It was sort of a compromise. I sorta wanted it to be like “Bon Iverre,” sort of like how I saw it, but that didn’t look good either, so I just decided to chop off the “h.”

2007 — Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros: After years of the Los Angeles party life and subsequent drug addiction, Ima Robot (a band based in Los Angeles) frontman Alex Ebert broke up with his then-girlfriend, moved out of his house, and spent time in rehab. During this time, Ebert began to write a book about a messianic figure named Edward Sharpe that was “sent down to Earth to kinda heal and save mankind, but he kept getting distracted by girls and falling in love.” Ebert adopted the Sharpe persona as his alter ego. He said, “I don’t want to put too much weight on it, because in some ways it’s just a name that I came up with. But I guess if I look deeper, I do feel like I had lost my identity in general. I really didn’t know what was going on or who I was anymore. Adopting another name helped me open up an avenue to get back.”

2007 — Passion Pit: The band culled their name from the Variety Slanguage Dictionary, a glossary of Variety‍ ’s frequently-used slang, which was provided by the Hollywood insider publication to help not-so-savvy readers decipher its content. The magazine used the term to refer to drive-in theatres, because of their privacy and romantic allure for teenagers.

2007 — Retribution Gospel Choir: An indie band from Duluth, Minnesota.

2007 — Ringo Deathstarr: A shoegazing outfit from Austin. The band name is a portmanteau of The Beatles drummer’s name, Ringo Starr, and the Death Star.

2007 — School of Seven Bells: An American indie rock band from New York City, often stylized as SVIIB. The band was named after a mythical South American pickpocket training academy of the same name.

2007 — Starfucker: (sometimes stylized as STRFKR), briefly known as Pyramiddd, is an indie outfit from Portland.

2008 — Freelance Whales: Judah Dadone, once said: “Everybody in New York is a freelancer of something, and we used to be too when we played in the subways.”

2008 — Good Old War: The name comes from the last names of the three founding members: “Good” for Goodwin (Keith); “Old” for Arnold (former member Tim); and “War” for Schwartz (Dan).

2008 — Iceage: A Danish punk  band from Copenhagen.

2008 — Pallbearer: A doom metal band from Little Rock, Arkansas.

2008 — Shovels & Rope: Folk duo from Charleston, South Carolina composed of husband and wife Michael Trent and Cary Ann Hearst.

2008 — Tanlines: An indie rock duo from Brooklyn.

2009 — Grouplove: An indie band featuring Hannah Hooper, Christian Zucconi, Sean Gadd, Andrew Wessen, and Ryan Rabin.

2009 — Family of the Year: An American indie rock band based in Los Angeles.

2009 — The Civil Wars: Co-founder Joy Williams said “It has nothing to do with the historical meaning. There is a great quote that I believe is Plato, who said, ‘Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle.’ As I was thinking about the music we make, that sense of battle seemed applicable.”

2009 — Foster the People: Originally called “Foster & the People” by frontman Mark Foster, but changed when many of his friends misunderstood the name as “Foster the People.” In a 2011 interview, Foster also recalled, “‘Foster the People’ — that’s like ‘Take Care of the People,’ ‘Do Something for the People’ . . . The first few shows that we played were for charities. It kind of clicked: Foster the People, that’s us.”

2009 — Hoodie Allen: Hoodie Allen originally was the duo of Steve Markowitz on vocals and Obey City (Samuel Obey, a childhood friend) production. The name came about because Steven’s nickname growing up was “Hoodie,” and he wanted a name that “would stick in peoples’ minds and be a little bit funny and representative of who I am,” so a play off of famed filmmaker Woody Allen was settled on.

2009 — Mini Mansions: a Los Angeles band featuring Zach Dawes, Tyler Parkford, and Michael Shuman.

2009 — The Dead Weather: A band that formed when Jack White, performing with The Raconteurs, lost his voice and the band asked Alison Mosshart of The Kills to fill in on some songs.

2010 — Augustines: An American indie rock band based in Brooklyn, New York consisting of guitarist Billy McCarthy, multi-instrumentalist Eric Sanderson and drummer Rob Allen. First they were called Augustines; then, after a conflict and lawsuit with another band, they became We Are Augustines; now they are once again Augustines, though their website is found at weareaugustines.com. The band derived its name from the month of August; both McCarthy and Sanderson were born in August, as was McCarthy’s brother, James. Augustines are known for intense shows and heavy interaction with the audience. Numerous shows have seen the band leaving the stage to perform on the floor with the fans.

2010 — Car Seat Headrest: Will Toledo recorded the vocals for his first album in the back seat of his car for privacy. 

2011 — The Milk Carton Kids: An American indie folk duo from Eagle Rock, California.

2011 — Pussy Riot: A Russian feminist punk rock group based in Moscow.

2012 — Bad Suns: From an interview from frontman Chris Bowman: “Coming up with a band name is a total bitch. Seriously. As simple as it sounds, I guarantee that it probably took ‘The Monkees’ fucking months to come up with their name. The time when we were figuring out what to call ourselves was one of the most stressful periods of my life, I’m not even joking. Then, one day, I was scrolling through my iTunes and saw the words ‘Bad Sun.’ It was a song by The Bravery, and it immediately stuck out to me. I asked the guys what they thought, we threw an ‘S’ on that sucker, and sealed the deal.”

2012 — Chumped: A “bummer band” from Brooklyn.

2013 — Hippo Campus: An indie band from St. Paul, Minnesota.

2013 — Museum of Love: An American band formed by former LCD Soundsystem drummer Pat Mahoney together with Dennis McNany.

2014 — Steve ‘N’ Seagulls: A Finnish group known primarily for its covers. The band name is a pun on 7th-dan black belt and “actor” Steven Seagal.

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Postscript

What becomes clear when reading through all these origin stories is just how cross-pollinating the culture is, with many bands taking inspiration for their names from such sources as:

• Earlier musicians: see Blind Lemon Jefferson (1900s), who inspired both Jefferson Airplane (1965), and Blind Melon (1990); The Beatles (1960), and The Hollies (1962), both of whose names were in homage to Buddy Holly and his band The Crickets; or American blues singer Z.Z. Hill, who inspired the name ZZ Top (1969)
• Song titles: Bad Suns (2012), Cocteau Twins (1979), Jennifer Gentle (1999), Radiohead (1985), St. Vincent (2003), Steeleye Span (1969), Stiff Little Fingers (1977), Tangerine Dream (1967), and The Waterboys (1983), among many others
• Song lyrics: Prefab Sprout (1978), Simple Minds (1977), The Mountain Goats (1991)
• Literature: Art of Noise (1983, from the essay “The Art of Noises” by Italian futurist Luigi Russolo), Opeth (1990, from the fictional city “Opet” in the Wilbur Smith novel Sunbird), Pere Ubu (1975, from Alfred Jarry’s play, Ubu Roi), Silver Apples (1967, Yeats poem), Tears for Fears (1981, from a line in psychologist Arthur Janov’s book Prisoners of Pain), The Doors (1965, from The Doors of Perception, by Aldous Huxley, itself from a line in a William Blake poem), The Fugs (1963, from the Norman Mailer novel, The Naked and the Dead), The Velvet Underground (1965, from a subculture paperback, The Velvet Underground, by Michael Leigh), This Mortal Coil (1983, Hamlet), Two Gallants (2002, James Joyce story in Dubliners), Uriah Heep (1969, from the novel David Copperfield by Charles Dickens)
• News Articles: Gang of Four (1977, from a newspaper article on the intra-Party coup against China’s “Gang of Four”), New Order (1980, from an article in The Guardian entitled “The People’s New Order of Kampuchea”), The Clash (1976, newspaper headline),
• Movies / Television: Barbarella—Alice Cooper (1968), Duran-Duran (1978), Bright Eyes—Bright Eyes (1995), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang—Fiery Furnaces (2000), Clangers—The Soup Dragons (1985), The Simpsons—Fall Out Boy (2001), The Devil Wears Prada—The Devil Wears Prada (2005)
• Art: Art of Noise (1983, from an essay by Italian futurist artist Luigi Russolo), Bauhaus (1978, after the German Bauhaus art movement), The Dandy Warhols (1994, a play on American pop artist Andy Warhol’s name)
• Cuisine: Blind Lemon Jefferson (1900s), Blind Melon (1990), Cake (1991), Iron and Wine (2002), Jello Biafra (1976), Jelly Roll Morton (1900), Lambchop (1986), Meat Puppets (1986), Mudhoney (1988), Neutral Milk Hotel (1988), Pearl Jam (1990), Prefab Sprout (1978), T-Bone Walker (1928), The Apples in Stereo (1992), The Soup Dragons (1985)

Also check out the use and evolution / mutation of words over time, such as “son/sun”: Son House (1920s) –> Sonny Boy Williamson (1937) –> Sun Ra (1952) –> Sonny Rhodes (1958) –> [the Kinks song “Uncle Son” (1971)] –> Son Volt (1994) –> Silversun Pickups (2002) –> Sun Kil Moon (2002) –> Bad Suns (2012).

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SOURCES:

• AllMusic
• Band Name Explained: Procol Harum
• Band Name Origins
• ClassicBands.com: ? and The Mysterians
• PBS Jazz
• Rate Your Music: The Origins of Band Names
• Rolling Stone: The Band Name Game
• SantaCruz.com: Heartless Bastards Take An “Arrow”
• Spin: Broken Social Scene
• Spin: Flaming Lips
• Spin: Iron and Wine
• Spin: Making the Brand: The 40 Greatest Band Names of All Time
• The Biography Channel
• The Phoenix: Bonnie “Prince” Billy”
• The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
• Urban Outfitters: Bad Suns
• Wikipedia: Band Name Etymologies (and individual band pages on Wikipedia)
• Young God Records: Akron/Family

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BONUS:

• Check out the great Monty Python bit, “Rock Notes,” for a hilarious fusillade of fictional band names, including at least one, Toad the Wet Sprocket, that was later lifted from this bit to become a real band name in 1986.