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One can only assume that every band thinks they landed on a great idea when they chose their name. Truth is, only time will tell if a name was inspired or not. Take a stroll through the rock and pop graveyard, if you dare, and peruse the tombstones. There are hundreds of now-defunct recording acts whose primary legacy is the meaninglessness, silliness and/or profound outdatedness of their name.

Fever Tree. Headpins. Archers of Loaf.

The Balloon Farm. Fabulous Poodles. Spooky Tooth. Kajagoogoo.

Ultimate Spinach. Peppermint Rainbow. The Eli Radish Band. Screaming Yellow Zonkers. (Wait, that one was actually a snack food.)

Scritti Politti. Milli Vanilli. Aorta. Duke Tumatoe and the All-Star Frogs.

Budgie. Badger. Beast. Bones. Bananarama. Breakwater. Bloodrock. Bulldog. Bubble Puppy. Blow Monkeys.

So, what is in a name? Band names often exemplify a certain style or attitude, so they often aren’t as interchangeable as Shakespeare’s “a rose by any other name” premise would suggest. The 1910 Fruitgum Company could no more convincingly present “Godzilla” than Blue Öyster Cult
could sell “Simon Says.” Imparting one’s purpose or philosophy isn’t always the main motivation for a name, but it’s a time-tested approach that, if nothing else, proves to pop-culture archeologists that your band had a reason for existing besides simply impressing the opposite sex and avoiding a traditional job. Devo did it by naming their quirky quintet after a shortened version of the word “de-evolution,” the cultural theory they meant to expose in their robotic rock. They tried to tell the world it was getting more stupid every minute, but they looked so goofy themselves that the point might have fallen on deaf ears. The band Utopia, though it dabbled in everything from humor to blistering sarcasm, carried a name informed by bandleader Todd Rundgren’s idealism and deep desire for social revolution.

The Doors' Jim Morrison had been reading Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, a book about drugs and spirituality, when he decided to adopt the title as an entryway into his band’s moody and mystical universe. You must admit, the origin of the name sounds intellectual and rather impressive—more so than “We walked straight into a door on the way to the rehearsal room” or “We dropped an ashtray full of Scrabble pieces on the floor and it spelled itself on the rug.”

Lynyrd Skynyrd, Southern rock’s linchpin band, simply wanted to get the last laugh on Mr. Leonard Skinner, the gym teacher who was merciless to certain band members on account of their longer-than-average hair. Mission accomplished. Then there's Mountain, a name that merely refers to (snicker) the 300-odd-pound girth of Leslie West, its bludgeon-blunt lead guitarist.
The Clash merits a special mention. For one, it’s a perfect example of the economy and visceral impact that make a band name outstanding. It also sums up the band’s raw, unrelenting sound and its highly political agenda. More important still, it embodies the rebellion of the punk-rock movement the band helped to ignite, without ever becoming as retrospectively groan-worthy as punker peers like the Sex Pistols.

If a band’s purpose was less conceptual (KISS, after all, just wanted to “rock and roll all night and party every day”), the main thing was to devise a simple, memorable and at all costs cool-sounding word or phrase to adorn the album covers. Cool, however, is a subjective hobgoblin, as changeable as the chilly air of mid-September and fickle as the changing fashions slavishly followed by all but the most distinctive pop and rock performers. Many band names are based on a style that’s trendy at the time, or perhaps chosen as a reaction against the status quo. The attempt to be self-consciously clever or weird can be the kiss of death, especially if a band’s music proves as dispensable as the name under which it’s released. The hairdresser-led-and-styled A Flock of Seagulls took a nose dive after rapidly exhausting their supply of hit songs and, even more devastatingly, their hair products. The highly commercial if short-lived pop twosome Wham! deserves points for effort and onomatopoeic effect. But Wham! was also the sound made by millions who, when encountering the British duo’s dangerously memorable ditties on the radio, lunged so energetically to change the station that they struck their heads on their windshields.

An identity that doesn’t weather well leaves a lamentable legacy for acts unlucky enough to have only a hit or two, just enough to keep them forever recorded in the annals of music history. Even drunken sailors give at least a little thought to the tattoo they’re about to make a lifetime commitment to. Did Toad the Wet Sprocket (a Monty Python reference), Quarterflash (an Australian slang phrase) or Deep Blue Something (your guess is as good as any) really consider how they’d look in a pop-chart reference book a decade or two down the line? Okay, so Ram Jam, Wang Chung and Black Oak Arkansas roll off the tongue especially nicely. But what good is that when the only lips that speak those names today are the ones belonging to the disc jockey who does the “where are they now?” program?

The best a band can do—particularly if it’s destined to last—is select a phrase that somehow transcends the era that spawned it. It’s hard to top The Band, the two words that transformed Bob Dylan’s backing group into an aggregation that simultaneously sounded generic and definitive. Equally inventive is The Who, a timeless name which managed to declare itself even as it posed a question of identity. Topping the flat-out-lucky category is Pink Floyd, a band that far outlived the psychedelic era that birthed it. Founding member Syd Barrett stumbled into immortality when he, on the spot, combined the names of obscure American blues musicians Pink Anderson and Floyd Council at a gig one night, when a new name was suddenly required. Thankfully, the band’s first few labels—The Meggadeaths, The T-Set and The Screaming Abdabs—didn’t stick. Still, how unfortunate the results might have been if Barrett had plucked a different colorful-nickname-and-surname pairing out of the air on that fateful night—we might now own albums by Yellow Stan or Aqua Bob.

The single-word name remains a popular choice, one that resulted in classic-rock keepers like Cream, Free, Yes and Queen, a most fitting emblem for the regal rock of Freddie Mercury and company. Nirvana was one of the last first-rate entries of the 20th century, but it, like many others, owes a debt to the creativity exhibited during the period generally considered to be rock’s most fruitful—the 1960s and ’70s. (In fact, the first band to record under the name Nirvana did so in the U.K. in 1967.) Van Morrison’s first band—Them—isn’t quite as well remembered as the aforementioned, but the cheeky, monosyllabic handle was a masterwork of simplicity. It also proved a very early rule-breaker at a time when the ubiquitous article “the” was virtually prerequisite, as it had been since the first part of the 1900s. But group names were seen infrequently on the hit parade prior to the 1950s.

Early in the 20th century, entertainers routinely went by their own individual names or stage names (if they were originally christened with marquee killers like Emil DeFloracoccio or Wilhemina Sputz). They might co-bill their backing group, if a tad self-servingly, as in Bob Crosby and the Bobcats (a tradition later influential in country & western for outfits like Buck Owens and His Buckaroos). Big bands were simply named after their leaders, unless a descriptive and alliterative caboose could be found, such as Woody Herman and His Thundering Herd.

From the black church, there gradually emerged vocal harmony groups like The Ink Spots, who left an indelible mark as the precursors to the doo-wop craze that in turn influenced early rock ’n’ roll. There were dozens of stylishly named doo-woppers, but the sturdiest of these include The Platters, The Drifters and The Coasters, African-American groups that laid groundwork for the modern-day rock band. They would also remain influential for the best-known black acts to follow, from The Four Tops and Smokey Robinson’s Miracles to The Supremes, The Spinners and the almighty Temptations. The Commodores would be the next to carry the torch, and even the outrageous Parliament-Funkadelic (later shortened to P-Funk) was an update of the original and more traditional Parliaments, whose beginnings can be traced to first-generation doo-wop.

Equally important were late ’50s/early ’60s instrumental (or “surf”) bands. They brought pizzazz and a touch of mystique to the world of Caucasian combos, otherwise laden with bland and cornball labels like The Crew Cuts and The Four Lads, Dickie Doo and the Don’ts (whose 1958 hit “Nee Nee Na Na Na Na Nu Nu” made their name sound positively inspired in comparison) and those of buttoned-down mainstream folkies like The Rooftop Singers. Six-string-toting gunslingers like The Ventures, The Shadows and The Tornadoes also helped glamorize the electric guitar, which had become affordable and widely available to consumers. The tube-amplified twang of Fender, Gibson and Rickenbacker reverberated to every corner of the civilized (and soon to become less civilized) world, not the least of which was Liverpool, England. There, it reached the lads that would change the face of pop music, not to mention its hairdo. Here, we encounter the most famous band name of all time: The Beatles. Their unique and understated title both honored rock pioneer Buddy Holly’s Crickets and put the “Beat” in the emerging style heralded as “beat music.”

It was only after the pop revolution spearheaded by The Beatles that groups began experimenting en masse with not only how they sounded, but what they were called. Not every one did as well as, say, The Move or Procol Harum (a misspelled Latin translation of “beyond these things”). But the “the” was soon jettisoned by many in favor of free-standers like Quicksilver Messenger Service, Jefferson Airplane, the eloquently named Love and the lesser-known but neatly inclusive People. The sky was the limit, and names became fanciful and outlandish. Ironically, the very same oxymoronic formula resulted in vastly different fates for Led Zeppelin (eternally cool) and Iron Butterfly (once cool for roughly 17 minutes—the length of their semi-wretched, album-side-long “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” which would have been “In the Garden of Eden,” as rumor has it, had its primary composer been sober enough to actually articulate it during the first run-through).

The wildly experimental period encompassing the mid-to-late ’60s left in its wake the sophisticated as well as the kitschy. King Crimson, The Moody Blues, Genesis and Soft Machine set the pace for the coming wave of progressive-rock bands, while the paisley parade of less durable, day-glo identities were the first to inspire the still-popular pastime of making up ridiculous fictional bands. The only thing better than mocking The Chocolate Watchband, Strawberry Alarm Clock or The Electric Prunes is ridiculing punk, post-punk and heavy-metal monikers from Throbbing Gristle, Anthrax and the Butthole Surfers to the more laughable than disturbing Bloody Wall of Gore, Pungent Stench and Disembowelment. (Frankly, if high-fiber supplements were not so readily available, The Electric Prunes could easily sound as daunting.)

The golden age of band names had officially ended by the time irony, nostalgic mimicry and the intent to shock, disgust or alienate became commonplace. The postmodern period of band names began to take hold as early as the late 1970s with The Dead Boys, The Damned and their safety-pin-punctured like. It was in full bloom by the time the hard-rock parody band Spïnal Tap appeared in 1984, hilariously etching an indelible line between rock's “classic” and post-punk periods. Around the same time, though, the first crop of MTV bands was doing its best to inject some personality, with admittedly mixed results. Young music listeners—that is, viewers—witnessed the emergence of The Fixx, Eurythmics, ’Til Tuesday (taken from the title of an obscure 1967 David Bowie song), Missing Persons, Men at Work and Split Enz. Of them all, The Police remains an especially, er, arresting name. (Perhaps the still-popular trio would be willing to apprehend redundancy-prone offenders like Mr. Mister, Duran Duran and The The.)

In a few cases, words weren't even required in order to make a lasting impact. U2, a name purportedly chosen for its ambiguity, nonetheless seemed to include everyone (“you, too”); at any rate, it has proven admirably immune to anachronism some 30 years hence. INXS (say it as “in excess”), for some, was as indulgent as it sounded, while fans of thinking man’s pop found the pithy XTC to be a very happy medium. Reggae-pop outfit UB40 got its name from the code for England’s welfare form—an item that success eventually rendered unnecessary. (Imagine the sting of irony, though, if the band’s members should ever be forced to return to the unemployment line . . . ) But the grand-prize winner for the most fetching and original vanity license-plate fodder was a decade older than its ’80s counterparts: ABBA. The group's now embarrasingly outdated stage wardrobe might have made new-generation converts wonder if it stood for A Bad Boutique Advertisement. Nope. It’s simply an acronym for the members’ first names—Anna, Benny, Bjorn and Agnetha—and it has been holding up as durably as the Swedish quartet’s alternately buoyant and bittersweet back catalog.

There have been bands with perfectly good names that explained exactly who or what they were but failed to drive their keepers to lasting fame. Occasionally, a great name withered on the vine. The Knack, for example, was a snappy little number that would have served its owners well had they not squandered it on five bucks’ worth of lusty power-pop and Beatles-lookalike gimmickry. But rock’s record books are also peppered with oddball or benign constructions that are forever emblazoned on pop culture’s consciousness. Got any idea about the meaning behind Creedence Clearwater Revival? ZZ Top? Buffalo Springfield? Does it matter? How could a band saddled with the name of the 17th-century inventor of the seed drill—Jethro Tull—become a classic-rock institution?

In the end, then, it has to be the music that makes or breaks a band. An appropriate label can be a beautiful thing, though, even if it’s the result of dumb luck or a momentary whim. On paper alone, there’s nothing remarkable about a name like The Beach Boys; in fact, it was stamped on the label of their first single without their knowledge. A record company guy figured that The Pendletones (based on then-popular Pendleton-brand casualwear) wouldn’t speak as loudly to followers of the early ’60s surf craze as The Beach Boys. It took Brian Wilson’s visionary pop genius and his band’s heavenly vocal blend to propel that plain old name into posterity, but there it shall ever remain (however uncool that might seem to your nephew, who showed up at your daughter’s wedding wearing a Cannibal Corpse T-shirt). And there’s a satisfying kind of justice in that, given the band’s initial innocence and sincerity and, as a result, the positive feelings its music evokes. When someone utters “Beach Boys,” you can be assured that the surf is up, fun and romance are afloat and good vibrations are in the air. That’s not something anyone will ever be able to say about the Butthole Surfers. Ψ

[Author’s note: Every band mentioned in this essay was or is an actual recording act. Apologies to those readers whose favorites aren’t mentioned.]