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Names -> Band Name Origins -> W, Page 1
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).
Latest Entries
Entries starting with W are split into multiple pages: 1 2
There are 4772 Band Name Origin entries on the site.
Name | Origin | Submitted by: | ||
| The W's | read in an interview, the members were bored and said the name sounded cool | john | ||
| W.A.S.P | W.A.S.P simply are short for We Are Satans People. | isbjoerN | ||
| W.A.S.P. | We Are Sexual Perverts is inscribed around the self titled LP album. But when asked directly the only answer is "We Ain't Sure, Pal". | Gango | ||
| W.A.S.P. | We Are Sexual Perverts is inscribed around the label on their self titled debut LP. | George | ||
| Waiver | Originally this was the working title of an instrumental song but soon became the band name. It was the only thing written on a white board in the room where they first rehearsed. | Jason Bassett | ||
| Walk The Moon | The band members have said it's taken directly from the title of The Police song, Walking On The Moon. They just shortened it some for their band name. | Edward | ||
| The Wallflowers | The name owes it's origin to a comment made by a photographer, while having a picture of the band taken. He said something along the lines of "Do Something. Don't just stand there like Wallflowers." | Ska | ||
| The Wallflowers | The name comes from a traditional song on Bob Dylan's Bootleg Series compilation. | Jeb again | ||
| Wallflowers | jakob posted on the band' site saying that they came up with "the wallflowers" after sitting around the dinner table. it was basically the only name that nobody hated. he said it was hard enough for 5 people to decide what to order, let alone choose a name that they'd have for the rest of the band's career. another popular theory around is that while the guys were at a photoshoot, they were pretty shy, standing off to the side. the photographer made a comment saying how they looked like a bunch of wallflowers. however, jakob's said that's incorrect and that it's all in the dinner theory. | Louise | ||
| Wang Chung | Named after the Indonesian slang term for a lug wrench (onomatopoetic phrase that describes the sound of a dropped lug wrench). | Geno | ||
| Wang Chung | The sound a guitar makes when you strike a string. I don't believe it is Chinese for "perfect pitch" as some have claimed. | Chung | ||
| Wang Chung | I saw an interview with the band where they said the name referred to the sound of an electric guitar being strummed up, then back down. | Ricky-rick-rick | ||
| Wang Chung | Supposedly, named after Wang Chung Way, a tiny street in LA's Chinatown, where there was a Chinese restaurant which put on punk shows upstairs. However, it is worth noting that the band is in fact from Kent in southeast England. | Tim Horrigan | ||
| Warrant | It is rumored that the guitar player (Eric) in the band was a huge fan of RATT and more so of their Lead guitar player Warren DeMartini. So as an homage to him, he named the the band Warrant. | Jesse | ||
| Warsaw | Warsaw was the first name Ian Curtis' band, Joy Division. They took the name out of Bowie's song because they admired his music so much. I'm surprised this wasn't here! | dd | ||
| Was (Not Was) | The Was brothers' family name is pronounced "wAHs" not like the word "was." Everyone kept mispronouncing their names. They thought this might clear it up. Was, not was. | Some Moron | ||
| WASP | We Are Sexual Perverts | Mike | ||
| Wckr Spgt | As a spigot made of wicker would not function by design, the band views itself similarly in relation to music. The missing vowels were "taken" by the bassist in 1983 and never returned. | Kevin Grams | ||
| We Have Degrees In Physics | None of them have degrees in physics. So it's ironic. | Optimus Lime | ||
| Weatherbox | The name of a song by Mission of Burma. | Alex | ||
| Wedge | The name came from a Star Wars character - Wedge Antilles. Wedge was one of the few pilots to survive the death star battle. One night at practice, Eric Coiner (the bass player) quoted a line from that scene and it stuck. The band's tag line is appropriately "Let Go." | J. Simmons | ||
| Wedlock | It was a reaction to some 2004 anti-gay legislation that Bush proposed. | ArtistInfo | ||
| Wednesday Week | The band is named after the song by The Undertones. | Don | ||
| The Weeknd | His name derives from an incident in his childhood where he dropped out of school and moved from home - essentially, leaving one weekend and never coming back. The omission of the third "e" was due to a band from his province of Ontario taking that name. | Dominicmgm | ||
| Ween | On top of the Ramones-same-last-name thing, I read that Ween was a mix of the words "wuss" and "peen" (short for penis) | Sam | ||
| Ween | I have read that the lead singer was in an accident when he was younger, and his weiner got cut off. Since he is left with only a nub, he calls it a Ween. The rest of the group always thought it was funny, so that's what they named the band. | Steve | ||
| Ween | Mickey Melchiondo and Aaron Freeman (the real names of Dean and Gene Ween respectively) decided that "any self-respecting members of a band should share the same surname" (in homage to the Ramones.) So, they picked out the name Ween and chose new first names to fit along with it. | JRSheen | ||
| Ween | The name is a mix of the 2 words: Weiner and Penis. | The Fella | ||
| Weezer | weezer frontman had bad athsma when he was a kid | wilts | ||
| Weezer | It's popular misconception that Weezer are named after River's supposed asthma. Rivers himself has openly admitted that this is not what Weezer are named after. | Thomas Canu | ||
| Weezer | Weezer are called so, becuase the singer, Rivers Cuomo, suffered from bad asthma when he was a child. His nickname became Weezer, hence the band name. | ditz | ||
| Weezer | Well while there is much speculation, it has recently been discussed at the offical Weezer message board, that Rivers Cuomo weezer's front man had a dream of a man with a flaming pie, the man with the pie was from outer space. When Rivers awoke from his dream the first thing that came to his mind was Weezer, and then he chose it for the band name. | Onlyinpinkerton | ||
| Weezer | There's been lots of speculation. it's been said that "Weezer" was frontman Rivers Cuomo's nickname as a child, but he himself has only said that they (the band) came up with a few names, and Weezer just stuck. To top it off, Rivers had a sled as a child that he loved so much, he wanted its name to be his last word (a la Citizen Kane). The sled's name? Wepeel. So we may never know... | Hokuto | ||
| Weezer | One of Jon's high school (or college) pals in GARFIELD was nicknamed Weezer. The guys in the band of this name thought it was cool. | Alan the Ottoman | ||
| Weezer | When Rivers Cuomo was young he had asthma and so the kids called him Weezer. | Chris | ||
| Weezer | It was Rivers' nickname in school. | Olga | ||
| Weezer | The lead singer, Rivers Cuomo had asthma as a kid, and would be called "Weezer" by the other children. | Irene | ||
| Weird Al Yankovic | "Weird Al" came up with this name while in college, where he was studying archetecture. The college had its own radio station and Al wanted to be a dj. He had found that all the dj's had really cool names, like a word in front of their names, like Cool Chris or something similar. So, Al came up with "Weird Al". And that name is very suiting too. =D | Billy Slim | ||
| Weird Al Yankovic | It was the lead singer Al Yankovic's nick name when he dj'ed on his college radio station. | Jessi Moen | ||
| Wendy/Walter Carlos | Walter Carlos was a synthesizer composer who had a big hit with "Switched on Bach", after getting a sex change operation, he became she and goes under the name Wendy. | Robert D. Arndt Jr. | ||
| Westlife | 3 out of 5 in the band came from the west coast of Ireland. Originally called Westside, but changed due to legal reasons. | Demi | ||
| Westlife | From the west of Ireland, where they had good lives before they met each other. | Nuala | ||
| Westlife | The band were originally called "Westside" because founding band members Shane, Kian and Mark were born and raised in Sligo-which is located in the westside of Ireland. Therefore they wanted to incorporate this into their band name. However due to legal reasons, as there was a hip hop group with a similar name- "Westside Connection", the band changed it to "Westlife"- managing to still keep in the Sligo association. | Joshua | ||
| Westlife | Their original name was Westside but later on it was decided that it was too common and many bands had that name.So their name was changed to Westlife. | thewestlifelover | ||
| Westworld | The band takes it name from the 70's movie of the same name. | ChrisG | ||
| Wet Wet Wet | It's a line from the Scritty Politi song, Getting, Having, Holding -'...her eyes were wet, wet with tears'...they added another wet to go against the trend of names such as The, The/Talk, Talk | Lianne | ||
| Wet Wet Wet | it is in reference to wet dreams | uncle bad finger | ||
| What Shoe? | When the guitarist/singer was in high school on one of the desks in his math class someone had carved "what shoe?" and he thought it sounded cool. | Eric | ||
| Wheatus | Brendan, Peta and Liz were all called 'Wedus' by their dad when they were kids so Brendan modified it | Me | ||
| Wheatus | Brendan and his brother Pete (Pete's the drummer in wheatus) were called "whedon" when they were little. So they transformed it in to Wheatus! | Brendan | ||
| Whigfield | She picked the name Whigfield as a tribute to her piano teacher. | Janice Ferrell | ||
| White Ibis | Because there is a bird named: White Ibis. | Oliver Persovic | ||
| White Snake | from a white albino ball python snake owned by David Coverdale while in DEEP PURPLE | Robert D. Arndt Jr. | ||
| The White Stripes | from a spiral-shaped red-and-white mint Candy | Keupon69 | ||
| The White Stripes | jack chose "white" because he wanted to be gentlemanly and give the band the last name of meg white(the drummer) | BlackDahlia | ||
| The White Stripes | Jack And Meg's last name is White. And they got the stripe thing because they both just dug how it sounded with White. Voila: The White Stripes are born. | SystemOfADownJunkie | ||
| The White Stripes | They both have the last name of 'White'. Meg at first wanted names such as 'Bazooka' or 'The Peppermints" because it reminded her of childishness. With her favourite canda as the spiral peppermints they chose 'The White Stripes' symbolizing both their last name but the childishness in a peppermint candy with thier white stripes. | Michael | ||
| The White Stripes | Named after the peppermint candy that the drummer, Meg, loved so much. | Jimmy_Fallon | ||
| The White Stripes | There was a genetics experiment in the 1980s and 90s. To get more color in petunias, researchers added a plethora of genes coding for color and were surprised to find that white stripes resulted instead of a brighter, more noticeable color as hoped. Thus too much gene expression led to white stripes rather than creating the beautiful petunia as hoped. (The research later led to a revolution in genetics in discovery of RNAi) | Andrew | ||
| The White Stripes | The name is the way it is, because Jack And Meg's last name is White and the stripes just matched great with that. Inspiration came from the white stripes a.k.a. cocaine | Likewhatsoadjsais | ||
| The White Stripes | Jacks name is John Anthony Gillis so its nothin to do with his name ( though Meg's is actually Meg White.) Meg's favourite sweets are the red and white swirly peppermint things (like her bass drum), so they called themselves The White Stripes! It's white not red becuase of Meg's name. | Crug | ||
| The White Stripes | Rumored to possibly be from a line in the lost-classic *Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains*: "If you work hard, maybe, in a couple of years time, you might be something different. At the moment, you’re just two white stripes." | cornslaw | ||
| The White Stripes | They were named after the White Stripes in Peppermint Swirls, because Meg really likes them. An image of a Peppermint Swirl is printed on the artwork for their debut album, and often on Meg's drumkit. | 87th | ||
| White Zombie | An homage to the Bela Lugosi film of the same name. | MagFlare | ||
| The Whitlams | The name is a tribute to former Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. | David B | ||
| The Who | Some of what has been said is true, especially the numerous names prior to the band being called THE WHO, however the boys decided on THE WHO in the first place because they didn't like the compare at the Railway, so when annonced the band for the first time after they had first changed it to The Who from The Detors, he went on stage and annonced '' and the next band is The Who'', to which the crowd replied ''The Detors'' and he went ''No, The Who''.. ...... | Tat | ||
| The Who | Everytime one of the band members suggested a name, someone would jokingly ask "The Who?" Finally, a friend suggested "why not just call yourselfs the who?" | Jessi | ||
| The Who | According to Pete Townshend, the fledgling mod/pub band sat around one night coming up with name ideas. Someone tossed in "The Who," but it didn't seem to stick...until the next day Pete found out that it had, after all! | Kielle | ||
| The Who | They used to call themselves "The High Numbers". When they turned up for a gig one night, the pub manager said, "What d'yer call yerselves?" Pete Townshend told him, "The High Numbers", to which the manager replied, "The "who"?!" They were "The Who" from that day to this. | Nick Bond | ||
| The Who | They were sitting at a bar and one of them suggested a name. THen some when went The who?? And they thought the The WHo would be a good name. | Avril | ||
| The Who | The Who started out as the detours, and in 1964 discovered a rival band had the same name as them, so they came up with the name the who which the band members liked. | big nige | ||
| The Who | They were The Detours until bassist John Entwistle saw a TV show in 1964 featuring an Irish group of the same name. "The Who" was suggested by Pete Townshend's friend (and later Who biographer) Dave Marsh. When the band was under Pete Meaden's management for a short time, they were The High Numbers to appeal to the Mod crowd, but reverted back to The Who when they switched to Kit Lambert & Christ Stamp's management. | SBAMKMFDMDFMK | ||
| The Who | The Who were originally called Detour. They changed their name after they changed their style from a more bluesy, soulful sound to the sonic sound of Who's Next. The name was just brought up by Townsend during a drink. | Daniel | ||
| Wide Mouth Mason | They named the band after jars they used to drink out of. | Chelsea | ||
| Widespread Panic | Refers to Mikey Houser, a former lead guitarist who passed away in 2002, due to pancreatic cancer) He had panic attacks in college and as a result, was nicknamed "Panic". | Happy | ||
| Widespread Panic | The band's late lead guitarist had been nicknamed "panic" in college due to his panicky attitude. When the band officially formed in 1986, they liked the term panic, but wanted to epitomize something bigger than panic. Hence the name Widespread Panic. | Brandon Coldren | ||
| Wilco | I'm certain that it is radio speak, take into account their album "yankee hotel foxtrot", all terms in the phoenetic alphabet. Plus, I happen to know that Jeff Tweedy is/used to be into HAM radio. | No, no | ||
| Wilco | The band Wilco hails from Illinois. Shortly after you enter the town of Chrisney, Indiana there is a gas station and the brand name is "Wilco". The sign is made like that of Arco stations in other Mid-Western states. Arco is a division of Atlantic-Richfield Petroleum and it seems that Wilco is another division as well. | Buckeye Traveller | ||
| Wilco | Wilco is short for 'will comply' | Marlon | ||
| WILCO | WILCO is the name of a truck rental company in an advertisement on a park bench in the beginning of the Robert Altman film "Nashville". This is mentioned by Ken Coomer in an "Austin City Limits" interview, along with a few other reasons. | Julie K | ||
| Wilco | Wilco is the name of a chain of gas stations. Jeff Tweedy used to work a one. | Dan | ||
| Wilco | Wilco, is radio talk short for 'I will comply.' | dixie | ||
| Wilco | Not a feed and seed company, but the expression: "Roger, Wilco and Out"... it's radio speak... | Kevin | ||
| Wilco | When Jay Farrar left Uncle Tupelo, Jeff Tweedy wanted to continue under that name. Farrar asked him not to, to which Tweedy replied 'Wilco' (will comply). | D-Sad | ||
| Wilco | It was a feed and seed company (conglomerate). | modern | ||
| Wild Beasts | Early 20th Century art movement Fauvism pioneered in France (in English, wild beasts) | Robert D. Arndt Jr. | ||
| Wildweeds | Formed in the 1960s in Connecticut. Originally The Weeds, it was felt the name was too suggestive of pot (aka "weed") so "Wild" was added. Originally a two word name, it was contracted into one nefore their first record, "No Good To Cry" came out. (A huge hit in Connecticut, the record was breaking nationally when a photo of the band appeared in a trade ad; they sounded black, and had been added to the playlists of largely black stations, but were dropped whenit was shown they were white. Hapilly, times have changed, but that great song, after many covers, is still looking for its hit version.) | Country Paul | ||
| A Wilhelm Scream | The Wilhelm scream is a frequently-used film and television stock sound effect first used in 1951 for the film Distant Drums.The band were previously named 'Koen' and then 'Smackin Isaiah' before finally settling on the current appellation. | Robert D. Arndt Jr. | ||
| Willa Ford | Her real name is Amanda Willaford, but she decided to use her last name and split it into 2 words: Willa Ford! | backstreetgrl | ||
| Willy and the Poorboys | It is the name of a Creedence Clearwater Revival album, and this (then imaginary) band is mentioned in the CCR song "Down on the Corner" | Susanna Viljanen | ||
| Wilson Phillips | The last names of the band members - Carnie and Wendy Wilson are the daughters of Beach Boy Brian Wilson. Chynna Phillips is the daughter of John Phillips from the Mamas and the Papas. | David Pratter | ||
| Winger | Named after the band's lead singer and instrumentalist. | Bobo | ||
| Wings | There is an old movie called "The Shape of Things to Come" starring a very young Raymond Massey. It is a post apocalyptic cautionary tale of a world run by anarchists after the "final war". However, a group of scientists (ALA Ayn Rands "Atlas Shrugged" but before her novel) comes along with high tech tools and weapons to restore order. They have some interesting "flying wing" type planes (pictured on their self titled album cover "Wings") that they use to do this. And they call themselves "Wings Over the World". This is where they derived the name. If you doubt this go rent the movie and then look at the graphics on the album. | yogi | ||
| Wings | Paul McCartney fought a lot of harsh criticism to have his wife (Linda) in the band, and given that the name "Wings" came to him while his daughter Stella was being born. Linda had hard difficulties while she was pregnant and Paul had visions of angel?s wings. (from TV-document "the story of Wings"). | Imppa | ||
| Wings | When Paul McCartney's wife Linda, was giving birth to their second child together, Stella, it was a more difficult birth than thier first child Mary. Paul recalled interviews, that he was sitting there praying, and he had a vision of angels' wings, and he thought, "Ah, what a comforting image.... Wings" and he decided to name his newly formed band after this vision! | Maccamaniac | ||
| Wishbone Ash | When sitting around with a bunch of potential names to choose from,Wishbone and Ash were next to each other on the page and, pressured to choose a name, put the two together because it was somewhat indicative of their eclectic, ethereal style. | snowman | ||
| Wolfmother | they were raised by a pack of wolves | ridetherocks | ||
| Wonder Girls | Comes from the idea of "girls that can amaze the world". | Robert D. Arndt Jr. | ||
| Wooden Thomas | Born Thomas Joseph Kiernan, he was told he could never be a good musician because his sense of rhythm and expresion was too wooden. Instead of proving them wrong, he persisted to prove them right. His website claims that he turned into wood as the direct result of a bicycle accident. | Joe Merrick. | ||
| Woodrow Wilson | The band was playing a Franz Ferdinand song in Junior High School and they had not been named yet. A friend named Tripp Stelnicki, (who later became manager) joked that they should be named Woodrow Wilson, staying with the World War II theme. The name stuck and the band rocks to this day. | George |
Entries starting with W are split into multiple pages: 1 2
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