Meaningful Name/Music

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


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.


  • 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 Halfored-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.
  • Wall of Voodoo were 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."
  • Devo was originally short for The De-Evolution Band.
  • The Band.
  • Ian Paice, drummer for Mark I and II of Deep Purple. Admittedly, with his complex style, keeping time wasn't necessarily his greatest concern.