Here's how 22 bands got their names

February 4, 2018

[Photo by: Babymetal/Instagram]

Coming up with a band name is no easy task. You want something catchy, something that will stick out and set you apart from other bands in your scene. So how did some of the most iconic bands in our scene such as All Time Low, Panic! At The Disco and Blink-182 come up with their names? We've gathered the origins behind the names of some of your favorite bands, and some of them may surprise you.

Check out these 22 bands and the stories behind their names, below!

3 Doors Down

While on tour the band saw a building that had a sign with most of its letters fallen off, leaving it to read “Doors Down.” At the time, there were only three members in the band, and ended up calling themselves 3 Doors Down.

The 1975

Vocalist Matthew Healy once said in an interview that he came up with the name after seeing a date inside an old art journal that read “June 1st, the 1975.” Healy thought the placement of the word “the” was rather intriguing, and the name stuck.

AC/DC

Malcolm and Angus Young came up with the band name after their sister saw “AC/DC” on the side of an electric sewing machine, and ended up asking, “Why not AC/DC?”

A Day To Remember

“It came from the old drummer, Bobby,” explains guitarist Kevin Skaff in an interview with Spin. “This was a long-ass time ago back in Ocala, Florida—probably 2003. Bobby had this girlfriend, and she just randomly blurted the name out during a practice of something. I remember everybody being like, ‘It sounds pretty cool, maybe we should use that.’ The funny part is that we ended up kicking Bobby out like two shows later and keeping the name. Maybe that’s not so funny, but he was a pretty bad drummer.”

Animals As Leaders

Loosely derived from the book Ishmael where the author looks at the world from an animal's perspective to critique human culture.

BABYMETAL

According to the band's producer, Kobametal, the name came to him by revelation as a play on the words “heavy metal.”

Blink-182

Originally called Duct Tape, the band changed their name to Blink but soon faced the threat of being sued by an Irish band that had the same name which ignited the switch to Blink-182. The band likes to switch up the story as to what exatly the 182 stands for, stating everything from the movie Turk 182 to the number of times Al Pacino says “fuck” in the movie Scarface.

Breaking Benjamin

The story goes that the band's vocalist once knocked over a microphone owned by the club owner during a show. The club owner made a statement about Benjamin breaking his microphone, and the band took the name.

Bring Me The Horizon

“It’s a slight change of a line from Pirates Of The Caribbean,” explains lead singer Oliver Sykes in an interview with Spin. “Right at the end of the film—it might even be the very last line—Johnny Depp says, ‘Bring me that horizon.’ That was really inspiring. I was still living with my parents in Sheffield, England, when the movie came out [in 2003]. For me and the band, playing music was always wrapped up with the idea of touring and traveling and seeing the rest of England and the rest of the world. We never thought doing that was possible, but that’s what we wanted to do. So that quote sort of stands in for our feeling of wanting to see what the planet had to offer.”

Dashboard Confessional

The name refers to a line in one of the band's very first tracks, “The Sharp Hint Of New Tears,” which goes “On the way home, this car hears my confessions.”

Fall Out Boy

Our beloved boys of FOB began playing early shows without having fully decided on a band name. The band went through a list of names during a performance, where one fan yelled “Fuck that! You're Fall Out Boy!”

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Linkin Park

Orginally called Hybrid Theory, trademark issues with a band called Hybrid forced the band to rethink their name. Bennington suggested “Lincoln Park” since he had to drive past there after band practice to get home. However, the doman name “lincolnpark.com” cost more than the band could afford, so they changed the spelling to Linkin Park. It was also suggested that the name change would help them appear right next to Limp Bizkit at record stores.

ONE OK ROCK

“We used to always do rehearsals in this studio at 1 o'clock in the morning,” explains Taka in an interview with Jame World. “We weren't very serious about choosing the name at first, but when we thought of 1 o'clock, it fit us so well. We thought '1 o'clock' didn't have enough punch and although the spelling is different, the Japanese pronunciation of 'rock' is in the word so we decided to use the word 'rock' instead. (In Japanese, there is no distinction between L and R sounds, so they sound the same.) Looking back on it, it was pretty simple. Then, we changed the left over sound of 'o-c' to 'OK', so the band's name changed like that.”

Skrillex

A nickname from Sonny's teen years where friends would call him “Skrillex,” “Skrill” or “Skrilly.” It was also used as his AOL screen name.

Twenty One Pilots

Tyler Joseph came up with the band name while reading All My Sons by Arthur Miller. In the play, a man commits suicide after causing the death of twenty-one pilots after knowingly sending them faulty parts for the good of his business during World War II. The story of moral dilemma was the inspiration behind the band's name.

Some bands found inspiration for their names from lyrics and song titles from other really rad artists.

All Time Low

The band debated calling themselves Playground-X after alevel from the very popular shooter game Counter-Strike, but eventually settled on All Time Low from New Found Glory's “Head On Collision.”

Panic! At The Disco