With so many bands out there, you now have to head to Google to make sure you aren’t stepping on anyone’s toes – and to make sure that your chosen name is someone that would actually appear for fans who want to learn more. Such is the reason why Scottish electropop trio Chvrches decided to give their band a bit of a unique spelling.
Initially, they were content to just go by “Churches” until Amy Burrows produced the artwork for one of their early singles, manipulating the font used for the band’s name so that the “U” looked like a “V.” The band nodded their heads at each other and made the change.
Daft Punk
There was once a band named Darlin'. All the way back in 1993, they released a song called “Cindy So Loud,” and in the Melody Maker column that was about singles, writer Dave Jennings described the song as “daft punky thrash.” Two of the members of Darlin' (which got its own name from a Beach Boys song), Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, thought the phrase was killer enough to become the name of the new project they were working on.
Multiple decades, multiple albums, and multiple Grammys later, Daft Punk is a huge name in the international music scene, and the listening public has all but forgotten Darlin'.
30 Seconds to Mars
Jared Leto, who got picked out of a hat to play the Joker on "Suicide Squad", had his first brush with fame when he founded the band 30 Seconds to Mars (He was also in "Fight Club").
Leto and his crew were trying to come up with the right kind of punchy, energetic name for an in-your-face rock band when they found a thesis from a former Harvard professor. It suggested that the human race is, thanks to an exponential technology curve, only thirty seconds to Mars compared to the length of history. That's the story according to bassist Matt Wachter.
!!!
Yes, apparently there's a band that is just !!!. Just go ahead and try to guess this one, but good luck. This band is described as post-punk funkers, and they took their name from the 1980 South African comedy movie "The Gods Must Be Crazy". The Khoisan language in the film was subtitled as a bunch of exclamation marks. The Khoisan language uses clicks as part of their speech, which is why this band's moniker is pronounced (and googled) “Chk Chk Chk.”
It's been a hot minute, but "The Gods Must Be Crazy" is still pretty good. It has to do with a small African tribe finding a glass Coke bottle. It's weird but memorable.
Blink-182
This famous rock band has always been tight-lipped about where their name came from. Mark Hoppus, Tom De Longe, and Travis Barker have long been in the music game, but theirs isn't the 182nd Blink to come about – it's only the second.
What we know is that, supposedly, De Longe came up with the name “Blink” on a whim. They went with that for a while, but they soon found themselves staring down the barrel of a loaded lawsuit from a pre-established Irish band named the same. Hoppus, De Longe, and Barker tacked on the “-182” to avoid litigation, and the rest is rock history.