Meaningful Name / Music

The protagonist's title can, at times, be a lyrical allusion to the themes of a song. As for bands, well, they name themselves whatever they like, so let's avoid spamming the page with every band that named themselves something that sounds like a good name for them. Notable examples only, please.

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• An all-male group called Queen, headed by a flamboyant bisexual man, Freddie Mercury.
• Evillious Chronicles:
  • Duke Sateriajis Venomania in "Madness of Duke Venomania", the vessel of the sin of Lust. His first name is based on "satyriasis" (obsessive sexual desire in men) and his last name is a mix of "venom" and "nymphomania".
  • Nemesis Sudou of "The Muzzle of Nemesis". It's pretty appropriate that the vessel of the Demon of Wrath just happens to be named "Nemesis", after the Greek god of retribution.
• The character who becomes "The Cool" in Lupe Fiasco's concept album of the same name is "Micheal Young History". That is "My cool, young history".
• The story behind Children of Nova's album, The Complexity of Light, involves a character named Corbin (obviously taken from "corvus", Latin for "crow" or "raven", which also gives us "corbies") who has some kind of deep association with crows.
• GACKT's name tends to sound weird to, well... people in general. But his name has an actual meaning. Gackt Camui is a modification of Gackuto Kamui which can either mean "Divine power of music" or "Divine being made of music".
• E.S. Posthumus' name stands for Experimental Sounds (ES) and "posthumus" is Dog Latin for "all things past."
  • Their albums often have meaningful names as well.
• Surprisingly, the guitarist in the German Rock/Pop band Tele actually does use a Fender Telecaster. Sometimes.
• Paul David Hewson was given the nickname Bono Vox. He didn't like it until he learned it was Latin for "good voice". Today he just goes by Bono.
• Cam Pipes, the Halford-esque vocalist of Canadian heavy metal band 3 Inches of Blood. As a boy he was a choir singer.
• The Scandinavian opera singers Nina Stemme (stemme = voice) and Gisela Stille (stille = quiet) Considering the popular image of opera songs, the latter might be an inversion.
• Another from Indonesia, teen singer Aluna Sagita Gutawa, or Gita Gutawa. "Aluna sagita" can mean "the playing/singing of a song," and a track in her first album was titled after this phrase. Her dad is composer and conductor Erwin Gutawa, so this isn't that much of a coincidence.
• Alicia Keys plays the piano. She came from Hell's Kitchen in Manhattan and her real name is Alicia Augello Cook.
• Gary Numan renamed himself (from Gary Webb) something that sounded, like, futuristic and cool, including the space-age spelling... which he copied off a plumber in the phonebook.
• Robert Palmer recorded many hits with Caribbean-style sounds mixed in (the islands have palm trees).
• Captain Beefheart's real name was Don Van Vliet. A don is a Mafia leader who has near-total control over his branch, and is not afraid to use violence to achieve his means. John French's book Through the Eyes of Magic proves that Van Vliet was indeed a ruthless leader, especially during the recording of Trout Mask Replica. He would frequently subject the other band members to intimidation tactics and violence, and would not let them eat more than a small amount a day. As an added bonus, he was the Captain, i.e. a different type of leader. It has been noted that his approach softened after his whole band walked out on him a few years later.
• Devo was originally short for The De-Evolution Band.
• The Band.
• Ian Paice, drummer for Deep Purple. Admittedly, with his complex style, merely keeping time wasn't necessarily his greatest concern.
• The Proclaimers' vocal style has lots of projection and spirit. They indeed "proclaim" what they sing.
• "tool" means "penis". Word of God is that this is only one interpretation, but some of the licensed artwork definitely goes down that particular route.
• Wall of Voodoo was named by a producer who compared their peculiar oeuvre to disco's "wall of sound", made by densely layering orchestras and synth... except Stan Ridgway and Co sounded like a "wall of voodoo."
• America seems like it's a boring example but it's not. One of the band's three core members was actually born in England, and all three were partly raised in England and had English mothers, but all were sons of American military personnel. After meeting at a London-area high school for American military brats, they started their musical career in London and recorded their first album there. They named their band to point out their American heritage, not wanting anyone to think they were British musicians trying to sound American. They would return to the States after their first album became a hit there.
• Earth, Wind & Fire got their name from the three key elements in the band leader's astrological sign.
• The Bee Gees are an accidental instance; they didn't name themselves because they were all young boys when the band got started (as a harmonious skiffle act in their adopted homeland of Australia). Their manager at the time, one Bill Good, named their band after his initials. It just so happened that, as they matured into their own band (in the late '60s - early '70s), it could also stand for "the Brothers Gibb".
• John Stump's music is purposely impossible to play; it, as it were, stumps players.
• Lance Bass is the bass singer of *NSYNC, though his name is pronounced like the fish rather than the voice type. Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me couldn't resist asking him about the fish.
  • The group also got their name from the fact they could sing together in five-part a cappella harmony, y'know, in sync.
• Black Metal band Mayhem has certainly been responsible for a lot of mayhem, both onstage and (especially) off.
  • Their first vocalist, who nicknamed himself Dead, killed himself.
• Earl Greyhound vocalist/guitarist Matt Whyte is Caucasian. His bandmates Kamara Thomas (bass) and Ricc Sheridan (drums) are African-American.
• In-universe example: The Depraved Dentist giving poor Pat Benatar a Bride of Frankenstein makeover in the music video to "Anxiety" is called Thomas Pain. Get nervous...Get nervous...Get nervous...
• Lieschen's father in Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht is named Schlendrian, or "Stick in the Mud." Fittingly, he's all high-strung over his daughter's coffee addiction.
• X Japan guitarist Pata received his nickname from his bandmates due to how he reminded them of the titular character from Patalliro!
• Algy's Simply Awfully Good at Algebra! (You may recall the Malcolm McLaren version, but it dates back at least until 1902.)
• Julio Iglesias' 1984 album 1100 Bel Air Place, his first English-language release (though it had a few Spanish tracks), was named after his then-current Los Angeles address.
• Elton John's first live album, titled 17-11-70 in most of the world but 11-17-70 in the US, was recorded off a live radio broadcast on November 17, 1970. The separate titles reflect different date numbering formats.
• Uncle Tupelo's third album, March 16-20, 1992, was so named because it marked the exact timeframe that the album was recorded in.
• The debut solo album from country artist Radney Foster, Del Rio, TX 1959, is named for his birthplace and birth year. Darius Rucker, who acknowledges Foster as one of his main country influences, gave Foster a Shout-Out in 2010 by using his own data as the title of his second country album: Charleston, SC 1966.
• A similar example is Lionel Richie's 2012 album Tuskegee. Richie was born and attended college^note specifically Tuskegee Institute, now a "University" in Tuskegee, Alabama.
• The 2018 collaboration album between Sting and Shaggy, 44/876, is named after the international calling code for Sting's native UK (44) and the area code for Shaggy's native Jamaica (876). The album even has a title track.
• Kraftwerk is German for "power station", which perfectly fits the band's all-electronic music and robotic imagery.
• Heilung: From their YouTube page:
  Heilung means healing in German and describes the core of the sound. It is supposed to leave the listener eased and relaxed after a sometimes turbulent musical journey.
• Nautilus Pompilius: In the song "Ivan Humanov", it's the titular character's name. "Ivan" is one of the most common male names in Russia. "Humanov" (or "Chelovekov", in Russian) is a non-existing surname — that consist of a root "human" ("сhelovek", "человек") and a suffix "ov" ("ов"), usual for Russian surnames. So the words mean "an ordinary person" or "a simple person". The first verse of the song confirms that:

  Ivan Humanov was a simple person,

  And his view of the world was simple.

  And his "yes" was a real " yes",

  And "no" was a real "no".

  And he knew what would be tomorrow from eight to five,

  And what whould happen after five.

  And if a mountain got in his way,

  He didn't try to get around it.

• Eminem:
  • His Slim Shady character has a few layers of meaning:
    • He's Marshall's Shadow Archetype.
    • "Slim Shady" literally means Lean and Mean. At the time Eminem created the character, he was extremely skinny due to not being able to afford food, alluding to the poverty that led Shady to become so twisted. In kayfabe, Slim's skinny because he's constantly on drugs, and just abuses them instead of eating.
    • In "I'm Back", Slim Shady explains his name as alluding to a thin line of coke in the back of a dark limo. This hints at how Slim is also an Allegorical Character for Eminem's fame. (As a result of this, "Slim Shady" is occasionally used as a slang word for cocaine in Detroit's rap scene, as in the song "Where Is Marshall" by Lonnie Bands.)
    • It's also something of a Line-of-Sight Name hinting to the Detroit connection - when driving to his miserable line cook job, Eminem liked to practice by thinking up rhymes for words he saw on street signage. One of the roads he passed to his workplace was Shady Lane (a photo of the sign can be seen in the CD booklet for The Marshall Mathers LP). (He also got the name for his Depraved Homosexual character "Ken Kaniff" from another Detroit road, Caniff Street.)
  • "Eminem" also has a few layers:
    • It's a play on his Alliterative Name - Marshall Mathers, or MM.
    • It's an Outside/Inside Slur - M&Ms have a white label stamped on them but are brown on the inside. (While kind of tasteless now, at the time, many popular white rappers had names signalling their whiteness.)
    • M&Ms are also sugary, addictive junk, brightly-coloured, marketed to children, and bad for their health, alluding to Eminem's Subverted Kids' Show, Corruption of a Minor and Anti-Role Model aesthetic.
• GWAR's members are no slouch in this department.
  • Beefcake the Mighty for his flabby physique.
  • Flattus Maximus for his severe gas problems.
  • The Sexecutioner for his sexceptional nymphomania.
  • Pustulus Maximus for his disgusting complexion.
  • Balsac the Jaws of Death for his...jaws of death.
  • Slymenstra Hymen and Vulvatron...for having a Y chromosome.
• Pearl Jam has a song named "Pendulum" that is full of Gratuitous Panning.
• Victory Brinker is a child opera singer who won 12 talent shows in a row, made it to the finals on America's Got Talent, and got put into the Guinness World Records as the youngest opera singer all when she was 9 years old. Sounds like she's on the "brink of victory".
• Angus McSix—the name of both the band and the lead character of its storyline—is a play on "Angus McFife", lead vocalist Thomas Winkler's character in Gloryhammer: the surname sounds like "McFive", so "one better" (from "Master of the Universe") makes him McSix.
• Foo Fighters as of the eponymous first album. You think you hear a band, but there is none because it's almost all Dave Grohl.
• "Constellation Cradle" from Vylet Pony's Carousel (An Examination of the Shadow, Creekflow...) refers to the Internet, in reference to online fame — where stars are born, a cradle for newborn constellations.
• In Peter Schickele's "New Horizons in Music Appreciation," which presents the first movement of Ludwig van Beethoven's Fifth Symphony with play-by-play commentary, the French horn player who flubs the second subject is named Bobby Corno, "Corno" being Italian for horn.

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