S, Page 4

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).

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Entries starting with S are split into multiple pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6

There are 4772 Band Name Origin entries on the site.

Name	Origin	Submitted by:
Soft Machine	Attributed to William Burroughs, it's a euphemism for penis.	Hilary
Soil	They looked at a pile of such matter whilst thinking of band names	death monkey
Soilent Green	the named there band after a sci-fi movie from back in the day called soilent green	jack frost
Soluna	They mixed the Spanish form of sun and moon to get Soluna.	Sarah
Something Corporate	after andrew mcmahon and josh parington were having a conversation about how bands have become so corporate, and how that's the only way they could sell records, they were trying to find a band name and josh remarked, jokingly, "it should be something corporate." meaning the name should be corporate, and it stuck.	amanda
Something Corporate	The guys were trying to think of a band name when Josh started to make fun of "corporate" bands, bands that are just in the business to make money. So Andrew, (I think), said they should name the band "something corporate", meaning name the band after an object that had corporate meaning. They just liked the way Something Corporate sounded.	Melissa
Something for Kate	Frontman Paul Dempsey had a dog called Kate. On her birthday, he wrote himself a note reminding him to get something for Kate.	fred
Son, Ambulance	Joe Knapp, the lead singer of the band Ambulance, was getting into some legal trouble cause there was already a band named Ambulance, so when he decided to rename his band he wanted it to reflect what was most important to him in his life, his son, Neal, and his band, Ambulance, and he decided to separate them both by a comma for the fact that he keeps them separate.	ParlourTrick
Sonata Arctica	Sonata is from the kind of music they used to play besides power metal and Arctica from the region they live (Finland)	Weballergy
Sonic Youth	A reference to Fred "Sonic" Smith of the band MC5.	Lauren
Sonic Youth	A combination of guitarist Thurston Moore's favourite bands at the time, Sonic's Rendevous Band and Big Youth.	Camille
Sopwith Camel	Named for a British World War I fighter plane.	Naomi Swanson
Soufly	Masx Cavalera, devastated by the unsolved murder of his stepson Dana, soon converted to christinaity. The word "soulfly" is simply taken from "Let your soul fly", when speaking of Dana in his songs. Every album, there is at least one soft tribute track named "Soufly" to Dana.	George
Soul Coughing	"Soul Coughing" is a euphemism for throwing up, coined in a poem by lead singer M. Doughty. The poem apparently sucked, but some folks liked that particular phrase, so it got recycled.	Rachel Amiranth
Soul Decision	When the band first started, someone asked them their name. They didn't have one, so one of the members replied 'we are in decision' (meaning we are still deciding). The person though that it was their name, so they came out as 'inDecision'. But that name was already taken, so they changed 'in' to 'soul' because they all liked soul music.	Junky
Soulfly	I can't remember where, but I once read that Max got the name from a Deftones song, "headup". max sings in that track, and on the chorus, he is screaming "Soulfly!" in the back. I hear he took the name from that song, but im not sure though...	Dude
Sound Tribe Sector 9	...Or STS9 as they are commonly listed originally refferred to themselves as simply Sector Nine(9). The name comes from the band's interest in the Mayan calendar, Tzolkin, (the 13-Moon Calendar), and Sector 9 specifically refers to the period of the Mayan calendar, which the Maya believed to be the golden age of civilization. However, as the band began to gain popularity, they were notified (in the form of a lawsuit), of a certain skateboarding company (Sector 9) holding legal rights to the name. Mindful of the possible consequences, the band proceeded to add two words to their name, thus becoming Sound Tribe Sector 9, four words that, to thousands of fans, are synonimous with good times, great dancing, and incredible music.	hatfield
Soundgarden	Soundgarden got their name from "A Sound Garden" -a pipe sculpture that stands in Sand Point Park in Seattle. Sounds are produced when air blows through the pipes.	Luthien
SoundGarden	They apparently named themselves after a pipe sculpture in Seattle's Sand Point that makes unearthly howling noises in the wind...	Ben Singer
Soundgarden	They named it after the Soundgarden in Seattle.	fred
The Sounds	The Sounds are from Helsigborg, Sweden, on the southwest coast of the country. The famous narrow body of water between Helsingborg and Denmark is called the Öresund (sound). In English, people just generally call it The Sound.	Kirk
Soundso	The name of this 1980´s east german amateur band - which means "such-and-such" or "so-and-so" in english - was choosen when somebody asked about the bands name, which at this moment did not yet exist, and this placeholder for something not exactly known remained the bands name. (Know it since I was the bands technician at this time...) Interesting is that "so und so" can also be interpreted as "conflicting" or "ambivalent"...	Emmi
The Soup Dragons	They took the name from a character in the 70's TV show Clangers.	Tommy Wimmer
Spandau Ballet	Martin Kemp says in his autobiography that the name was chosen after Bob Elms had seen the name scrawled on the wall of a toilet in Berlin.	Timoth
Spandau Ballet	"Dancing the Spandau Ballet" was WWII British soldiers slang for the dancing of soldiers mown down by the German Spandau machine gun (1200 rounds per minute) - the fastest machine gun of the time	Temac
Spandau Ballet	Spandau was the prison in Germany where Rudolf Hess was imprisoned. The band members were idling wondering what the few remaining prisoners in the early '80s did to keep themselves occupied. "Ballet" was one suggestion.	Nightboy
Spandau Ballet	Spandau isn't exactly a german town, it's a part of Berlin	alva
Spandau Ballet	Spandau is the name of the town where Nazi prisoners were incarcerated. Upon being sentenced to death, most prisoners were hung, and from all accounts, a hanging victim does a little dance as life is expiring. Hence, Spandau Ballet is a morbidly humorous reference to this little "dance."	OBartleby
Spandau Ballet	German soldiers during WW1 used a German machine gun gun called a Spandau and called the reactions of anyone caught in its cross fire the Spandau Ballet.	Pete Field
Spandau Ballet	Spandau is a town in Germany where they made machine guns - hence a "Spandau" is the name the guns are known by. If you shoot somebody with one of these, they will jump and dance about, doing the "Spandau Ballet"	Stevo
Spandau Ballet	The band was hanging out in the bathroom one day, and they saw some graffiti on the wall that said spandau ballet, so they named themselves after bathroom graffiti. very cool, isn't?	kate
Spandau Ballet	Thier manager found it on the bathroom wall at an early gig and suggested it to the guys.	Kiwi
Spanky and Our Gang	S&OG (1966-69) was made up of members Elaine 'Spanky' McFarlane, (ie: Spanky) Oz Bach, Malcolm Hale, Nigel Pickering, John Seiter, Kenny Hodges, and Lefty Baker (the gang). It was not coincidental that they named themselves S.A.O.G. - but it had nothing to do with the little rascals, otherwise.	Mitch DiSalle & Iona Lincoln
Spanky and Our Gang	Based on "The Little Rascals" and George "Spanky" McFarland. "Our Gang" was the name that was used for the Rascals' short films before they changed it.	oldperson
Sparks	According to IMDB, it's a play on the Marx Brothers	mads.
Spartan-117	Named after the main character in the microsoft xbox game, Halo.	Rave
Specii	Just an idea the band leaders friend had for the band's name. Nothing more.	LazerZero
SpeculuM	Inspired by the David Cronenberg film, DEAD RINGERS. "I'm going to insert the speculum now"	JohnnyTremendous.
Speedball	A deadly drug cocktail mix of heroin and cocaine	Robert D. Arndt Jr.
Spice Girls	During the making up of a name as out of Take five, High Five, Plus Five, and Touch. In the end Geri thought of Spice because they were all so different just like spices. That is how the Spice Girls were named. -- Got that info from Geri Halliwell's book "If Only" Blueytwo The Spice girl one that is supposedly from Geri's book is bogus, she says the spice names were given to them by a mag and verifys the story that they were named after a song called Sugar and Spice with girls being added to the name Spice becasue there was a band called Spice already GInger The girls wrote a song called Sugar and Spice (it was never released) and then one of them got the idea to call themselves the Spice Girls.	buttmunch
Spice Girls	they originally named their band "Spice" because it sounded hot, but it was already the name of a british rapper and they were nearly sued for using a copyrighted name .... so they changed it to "The Spice Girls"	juli
The Spice Girls	The girls wrote a song called Sugar and Spice (it was never released) and then one of them got the idea to call themselves the Spice Girls.	Vicious
Spice Girls	The Spice girl one that is supposedly from Geri's book is bogus, she says the spice names were given to them by a mag and verifys the story that they were named after a song called Sugar and Spice with girls being added to the name Spice becasue there was a band called Spice already	GInger
Spice Girls	During the making up of a name as out of Take five, High Five, Plus Five, and Touch. In the end Geri thought of Spice because they were all so different just like spices. That is how the Spice Girls were named. -- Got that info from Geri Halliwell's book "If Only"	Blueytwo
Spice Girls	they wanted to call themselves something hot, exotic and unpedictable and geri thought of spice. however...after trying out spice they needed a word to appear younger and more inocent (maketing for younger audience) girls was suggested and the rest is history!!	n*kokky
The Spiders	The group wanted to name our band "Buggers" but, I suggested "The Spiders" and they all agreed.	Brian Cassidy
Spinal Tap	Not many people realize but the name 'Spinal Tap' was chosen because the members swore to each other, that if any evil, or any dark force was to later try and steal what they had created, they would hunt the darkness (evil) down and perform an unnesessary spinal tap operation on them, with very very untrained hands.	Jumbofallice
Spineshank	The band felt people around them were stabbing them in the back, Spine = back shank = stab	Andrew
Split Enz	The band was called Split Ends until just before their first trip to Australia. They changed the "nds" to "nz" to relect their origins in New Zealand.	Brian Kelly
Split Enz	Tim Finn wrote "split ends" down in a book. One day as he and Phil Judd were trying to find a name for the band, Phil flipped through the book and saw "Split Ends" That stuck, and the band also had long hair at that time with Split Ends. It was changed to Split Enz to show their love for their home country of New Zealand, it was also because Tim believes that "the Z sticks in your mind."	dizrythmia
Spock's Beard	During rehearsal they were playing this strange music, like from another dimension. It was like in one of the Star Trek episodes, where Spock had a beard	fry
Spock's Beard	At a very strange Californian party Al mentioned to Neal that it felt like they were in a parallel universe where Mr Spock had a beard, followed by "Hey, wouldn't that be a great name for a band?". Years later when they actually formed a band, it was in the list of names and everyone hated it least. It was better than "One" which was what they did one or two gigs under.	Mike
Spock's Beard	The music is like something from an alternate universe, it's like Spock has a beard! That was said by the former lead singer, he was referring to an old StarTrek episode.	Rocky
Spoons	Gord Deppe chose this name for his band over a bowl of alphabet soup.	Celeste
Spyro Gyra	From a biology book. It's the name for slimy green pond weed.	Pip
Squeeze	"Squeeze" was the name of the Velvet Underground's final album, made after all four original members (Reed, Cale, Tucker, Morrison) had left and Doug Yule was the leader. VU has disowned the album (I mean, come on, NO original members? That is not the VU). Apparently, a band in the U.S. had the name Squeeze, and their first album (the one with "Take Me I'm Yours") was titled "U.K. Squeeze."	plasket
Squirrel Nut Zippers	Squirrel Nut Zippers are a peanut candy chew that was popular in the 50's & 60's and is now only available from specialty catalogs that sell nostalgic sweet shop items.	MKBookWorks
SR-71	SR-71 is (was) the name of an airplane of some sort.	bAZ
SR71	SR-71 is the name of a retired (in 1999) Air Force jet nicknamed "The Blackbird". It was a long-range recon plane with top speed of Mach 3+ (more than 3 times the speed of sound) and could travel at 85000 feet. This baby was BAD!!	Jay Hamm
SR71	This is actually the Lockheed Blackbird, the fastest plane in the world and hence not a "stupid band name"	james4real
SR71	It's possible that the name comes from the supersonic jet - the "SR71 Blackbird". Probability? Pretty safe bet, I'd say.	Piccolo
SR71	According to the website and interview from Metal Sludge.com, the band was indeed named after the plane of the same name. One member's father had a hand in the design or building of this aircraft.	Jesse
SR71	The band is named after the Lockheed SR-71 "Blackbird" spyplane.	Gordon
SR71	It may also be noted that before SR71 they were known as 'Radiostar' but RCA forced them to change their name. Before that they had a much cooler name than both. 'Honor Among Thieves'	..v..
SR71	SR71 is a spy aeroplane, successor of U2. Connection with U2 is clear. Although Bono's band might be named not after aeroplane name, there are no doubts about SR71. There are 67600 possible composition of two letters and two digits, and SR71 does not have another meaning (as U2 is also "you too").	Grzes
SR71	Besides being a fast plane, the SR71 "Blackbird" was also a spyplane, just like the now famous band and infamous spyplane, U2. Sadly though, SR71 lacks any double intendre such as makes a band name sound more clever. (i.e. U2) They could also be accused of jumping on the 'spyplane as band name' bandwagon, thus being even less oringinal.	Spyke Payan
SRC	SRC stands for Scot Richard Case, named after the lead singer. His real name is Scot Richardson.	Duckinshrubb
SS501	The name of the Lorean boy band is a combination of letters and numbers that have special meaning. The first “S” stands for “Superstar". The second “S” is an abbreviation for "Singer". The combination of 5, 0, and 1 symbolizes "five members united as one forever". Their name is actually vocalized as Double-S 501...	Robert D. Arndt Jr.
St. Lunatics	The St. Louis-bred rap group founded by superstar Nelly took the name "St. Lunatics" as an amalgam of "St. Louis" and "Lunatics". In 2000, Nelly said on the MTV series "Road Home" that he and his boyz do a lot of wild and crazy things in the Lou'... so "Lunatics" worked out perfectly.	Bo 'Ice' Bielefeldt
Stabbing Westward	When Chris and Mark were in college, they named their band Stabbing Westward because it had a "kill everybody in the school vibe to it"	stabbie
Stabbing Westward	It originated from Chris and Walter's college, Western Illinois University, where they hated the atmosphere so they felt like stabbing everyone.	SWDREAMFan
Stabbing Westward	The name of the band was potentially derived from the Wordsworth poem "Stepping Westward." It may also be related to the band's meeting up at Western Illinois University, as a rebellion to the conservative farming culture of surrounding Macomb, Illinois.	John
Stabbing Westward	They used the name as a way of describing Western Illinois University, where two members went to college. They hated the attitudes of the school, so they felt like they were being stabbed on campus.	electric
Stabbing Westward	Stabbing Westward shows up in history books as being the name givin to the movement of the american settlers as they slughtered the native indians in their westward path towards california in search of gold and land. Hence the stabbing of indians while traveling westward.	Brandon
Stabilo	They got their name from the Czech pen company, STABILO.	hamp
Stacey Q	Her real name is Lynn Stacey Swain, so she used her middle name and addded the initial Q because it sounded like Susie Q which she thought sounded cute.	La Choy
Staind	Started out life as "stain", but they found out there was already a band with that name. So they added just the "d" without the "e" to be unconventional.	the Marlboroman
The Standells	The group known for "Dirty Water" picked the name because they would stand around in their agent's office waiting for work.	old
Standing Innovation	the band's drummer ben came up with the name originally thinking the two words just had a good ring to them. The group really thought about the title 'Standing Innovation' and reflected on how they felt about their music. They declared that 'we've got a new idea, and we're standing up in the crowd to play our music."	derek
Stanford Prison Experiment	Named after an experiment conducted in Stanford University ,where a group of students were prisoners and another were the wardens, and it was observed how power was misused.	Sharath
The Stanley Louis Band	This small time indie band is named after 2 characters that lived in the downtown of Madison, WV. Both were considered mentally simple , but very interesting in a sort of twisted way	Jeff
Starsailor	When James Walsh was younger, he played with the Sailor Moon dolls from Japan. He was inspired by thier flights to the stars, therefore naming the band Starsailor. This is what they said on an interview.	Claudia and Alex
Starsailor	Before a gig the band's manager asked the lead singer, James Walsh, to name some of his favourite albums. One of these was "Starsailor" by Tim Buckley. The name was used for that gig, and kept on.	Stiff
The Starting Line	The band was doing a charity race to support kids and the band picked out the name the starting line.	Ben Diaz
Starving Bluesmen Quartet	They got it from Nix (harmonica player) who was broke and hungry at the time they made their first gig. Although they were a three piece band, they found amusing the idea of a invisible friend playing along or just a memory of a drummer who died from starvation.	Justafan
The Statler Brothers	The legendary country vocal group took their name from a box of Statler tissues in a hotel room they were staying in. Obviously none of the guys were named Statler, but two of the original members were brothers whose last name was Reid. Interesting trivia: before they were the Statler Brothers. they were called the Kingsmen and were a gospel act. Many naive audience members thought that they were the "Louie, Louie" group, which led them to learn the song due to audience demand.	Mark Speck
Steel Breeze	Known best for the small 1982 hit "You Don't Want Me Anymore", the group took its name from a line in the Pink Floyd song "Shine On You Crazy Diamond".	RJSchex
Steeleye Span	Named after a character in the song "Horkstow Grange" -- which they didn't get around to recording till their 30th Anniversary album.	mike weber
Steely Dan	The band's name (like a number of others) is derived from the works of William S. Burroughs: Steely Dan is the name of a dildo that appeared in Naked Lunch. Fagen once explained, "We just wanted to give the band a little more thrust than most other bands."	Anthony E
Steely Dan	I was watching this 70's action movie on TV once. I don't remember the name of the movie, but I do remember that the main character wielded a big gun called the Steely Dan. So, that's most likey where the name came from. [Ed.'s note: but it more likely came from the steel vibrator from the novel "Naked Lunch".]	Mr. X
Steely Dan	The name is one given by Jack Keroac in some of his writings to refer to characters meant to be representative of William S. Burroughs. In on particular writing, it also means not just the Burroughs character but also refers to a dildo.	R.M. STINEMAN
Steely Dan	The band's name (like a number of others) is derived from the works of William S. Burroughs: Steely Dan is the name of a giant flying steam-powered dildo that appeared in Burroughs' book Naked Lunch. Fagen once explained, "We just wanted to give the band a little more thrust than most other bands."	GF
Steely Dan	Steely Dan got it's name from a vibrator named "Steely Dan" from William S. Burrough's novel "The Naked Lunch".	HomerFan
Steely Dan	True about the Naked Lunch reference, but did you know that the Eagles' "Hotel California" gives an appreciative nod to Steely dan with the lyrics "they stab us with their steely knives..." The reference was a reaction to a Steely Dan song "Everything You Did" which contains the lyrics "turn up the Eagles the neighbors are listening."	Jack
Steely Dan	there 'is' a company..north of Chicago..in Niles,Il..called "the Steely Dan co"..they produced 'industrial vibrators for the machine industry"..they really did/do exist..i have seen the factory..the name steely dan became a coloqualism later..when bored 50's housewives..began using the smaller home model "massagers" for different purposes..	carcarx42
Steely Dan	A reference to the William Burrows novel "Naked Lunch," in which there was a dildo called "Steely Dan."	slidedaddy
Steely Dan	A reference from the novel "Naked Lunch", Steely Dan was the nickname of a female sex toy.	Mike
Steely Dan	In 1973, a Windsor Unimax 5000 computer system came up with 9,087 different names for Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, who were then performing under various names. They came up with a list of 50 before narrowing it down to the name 'Steely Dan.'	Larcen Tyler
Steely Dan	Name of a dildo in the William S. Burroughs novel "Naked Lunch."	zap
Steely Dan	Steely Dan was a steam powered dildo that came in editions I and II in Naked Lunch	Tim Hall

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