Names -> Band Name Origins -> Latest Entries
Do you know why a band picked out it's name? Feel free to let us know.
I can't verify all of these stories, so do take them with a grain of salt. I try and delete the ones that I know to be bogus, but I don't know the origins of every band name (and some bands intentionally tell different stories about picking their band name).
The 20 most recent entries are listed below. There are 4398 Band Name Origin entries on the site.
Name | Origin | Submitted by: | ||
| August Burns Red | Here is a quote from guitarist Brent Rambler. "We had our name because in high school, one of our best friends, Jon Hershey, who was also our vocalist at the time. But right before he joined the band, he was dating this girl named August. And the relationship got a bit out of hand and he really wanted to end it. So he ended the relationship and instead of getting just sad about it, she got really really really angry and Jon at the time had a dog named Redd, it was an Irish setter and it had red fur and everything. So she got really mad, went up to his house, and burned his dog Redd alive, in his dog house. And the name and everything comes from, because the next day, the headlines in the newspaper in the local news was "August Burns Redd" and then we just kind of went with it. It really affected Jon, so when we were picking a band name, that was one that stuck in his head, so he decided to use it. So our name doesn't mean nothing, it just had a really weird and kind of gross meaning. " - guitarist Brent Rambler | Travis | ||
| Goodnight Caulfield | A reference to the main character of Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield, and their dismissal of negative attitudes such as his. | Alex | ||
| Love and Theft | Country music trio. They took their name from the Bob Dylan album of the same title. They just thought it sounded cool. | Edward | ||
| Led Zeppelin | They were told their band was gonna go up like a lead Zeppelin, which won't go up very well at all. They changed the lead into led so Americans wouldn't pronounce it "leed" zeppelin | Spike | ||
| Silverchair | The Chronicles of Narnia - "The Silver Chair" | Savannah | ||
| 10,000 Maniacs | The band was named after the cult classic horror film 2000 Maniacs, before that they went by the name Still Life, and also Burn Victims | Patrick | ||
| Thrice | Thrice's name was formed from an inside joke when a friend claimed that he had beaten the game Frogger twice. Lead singer and guitarist Dustin Kensrue responded by bragging that he had beaten the game "thrice". | Clayton | ||
| Avenged Sevenfold | They got it from Genesis, Chapter Four where Cain killed his brother Abel. They also made a song (Chapter Four) about this story. | Travis | ||
| Archers of Loaf | They opened the dictionary and pointed their finger randomly. The first word they placed their finger on was archer. Since there is more then one member of the band, they made archer plural. Hence, Archers. They opened it up again and landed on another noun. The third time they opened it up they landed on loaf. Thenceforth, Archers of Loaf. | Travis | ||
| Bon Iver | From the French phrase meaning "good winter", bon hiver. | Alex | ||
| Coldplay | They took the band name from Tim Crompton, a friend of the band, who was using for his band but suggested they use it. The word Coldplay comes from a book of poems, entitled "Child's Reflections, Cold Play" by Philip Horky | Dave | ||
| The Fall of Troy | The band flipped open a history book and randomly pointed at places until they got a name they liked. Also how they got their original name, 30 years war. | Dustin | ||
| Geddy Lee | Gary Lee Weinrib. His parents were rescued from Nazi death camps in Poland. After the war they went to Canada. Gary was born and one of his relatives spoke with a thick Yiddish accent. Her call of "Gary Lee" came out as sounding like "Geddy Lee". Gary later took that as his stage name. | I Saw Rush 3 Times So Far | ||
| Judas Priest | it's an old expletive. It meant "Holy S***!" or "Jesus Christ!". It appears in old movies and probably fell into disuse in the prerock 50s. My folks don't remember the use of this term. It was often used to convey disgust. | James Jupiter | ||
| Pink Floyd | Syd had a blues compilation album. Two of the featured artists were Georgia artists PINK Anderson and FLOYD Council. It was a random selection and the band went on to greatness and fame. | James Jupiter | ||
| Firefall | Rick Roberts named his band after a tradition at Yosemite National Park where a woodpile was set on fire, then pushed off a cliff, forming flaming cascades. | MOR | ||
| AC/DC | This is the real story. AC/DC was on the back of Angus and Malcolm's sister's sewing machine not a vacuum cleaner. | Celeste | ||
| Bright Eyes | I had always thought the name had come from Edgar Allen Poe's Annabel Lee. Due to alot of Conor Oberst's repeating lyrics and concepts are also components of the poem. | Again. | ||
| Shirelles | The name was derived from the first name of their lead singer, Shirley Alston. | Barry Disbrow | ||
| Hard-Fi | It was given to them by Lee "Scratch" Perry, and it is a type of music that was originated in the mid 1900's. | Dongquan |
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