Band Name Generator

[Jean-Luc Pickguard]

As discussed in another thread, I have discovered another band had been using the same name as my recording project's band name, and although that other band has little digital footprint, they were using the name first, so I have decided to come up with a new name for my project.

 

Thinking up good band names on demand is not easy, good ones tend to come in a flash of inspiration out of the blue when you're least expecting it. I have found a few existing band name generators online, but I have not been successful in finding a name that I like using any of them.

 

I have now built my own band name generator, which I hope will work better.

 

This generates two word, three syllable names — which is my preference at the moment as this format tends to give many of the best sounding names,

- eg Aphex Twin, BadFinger, Black Sabbath, Bon Iver, Cocteau Twins, Deep Purple, Depeche Mode, Dirty Three, Fearless Flyers, Flaming Lips, Foo Fighters, Funk Brothers, Gentle Giant, GrinderMan, Honey Cone, Human League, Judas Priest, Killing Joke, King Harvest, Led Zeppelin, Low Anthem, Mars Volta, Matching Mole, Mazzy Star, Mink DeVille, Mountain Goats, New Order, NewYork Dolls, Nitzer Ebb, NineInch Nails, Primal Scream, SandPebbles, Sex Pistols, Shocking Blue, Small Faces, Soft Machine, Status Quo, SugarCubes, Taj Mahal, Thin Lizzy, Tin Machine, UK Subs, UnderTones, Van Halen, WaterBoys etc...

 

The link to my generator is at the bottom of this post.

 

Click the red button to generate a list of twenty-four suggestions for a band name and click the icon next to any name you like to copy to it the clipboard so you can paste it into your own document.

 

I've just finished coding this and already have a few possible band names copied into a pages document just from testing it.

 

If you are interested in how it works, you can view the page source to see the code and word lists. Everything is self-contained on the single page with zero external resources used. If anyone wants to contribute additional words I have left out, or finds any 'inappropriate' words please let me know and I'll make any changes needed when I update it.

 

This has been designed to work on every modern device including phones and tablets, however I have only tested it on my apple kit so far.

 

Link to the band name generator -> https://names.bandrocks.co.uk/

Edited February 25 by Jean-Luc Pickguard

[Woodwind]

Just had a play.

 

Got some really interesting word combinations that were either perfect bands names for genres I do or have occupied or results that led to a train of thought that gave me new ideas for names.

 

Great work @Jean-Luc Pickguard !!

 

Out of interest have you got your new band name yet and if so did it come directly from this system?

 

 

[Rosie C]

 

 

Hmmm... 🤔

 

However, this one isn't bad...

 

Edited February 24 by Rosie C

[Jean-Luc Pickguard]

 

4 minutes ago, Woodwind said:

Out of interest have you got your new band name yet and if so did it come directly from this system?

 

I have a short list of possible names generated from my page.

 

I'm probably going to expand the word list further, although if I add a large number of words I might need to use a different method to select them using separate files for the word lists.

[LowB_FTW]

After several refreshes it generated this …

Tee Rocket

Which is much better IMO when I change it to Tea Rocket.

 

Mark

[LowB_FTW]

Volume Boost

By far the best one I've seen that requires zero editing.

 

Mark

[Jean-Luc Pickguard]

There are about 3000 words in total in the app as it is currently.

 

I now have lists of over 11,000 single syllable words and 33,000 two syllable words (from https://en.wiktionary.org), but it will be necessary to remove a lot of crud from both lists for them to be useful. It may take a while to get these larger lists in a usable state if I do proceed with them.

[LowB_FTW]

Farm out some of the lists with directions of what you're looking for? I'm sure you'll get a volunteer or two to assist.

 

Mark

[Desbass]

Gave it a try. One of the options was "Taking Wind". Pretty good but I'm more of a "Making" or "Passing" kind of a guy! Seriously though, some really good alternatives to the nonsense myself and bandmates have came up with after starting afresh after band personnel changes. Well done!

[bass_dinger]

This works very well, especially using two words/three syllables as the basis of the name.

 

Not too sure about "Away Bass", but I liked Friend Clinic. 

 

Excellent work @Jean-Luc Pickguard.

[Jean-Luc Pickguard]

I've made an online list editing app today, which will make it very easy to delete words from my long word lists, so as long as I  have a signal I can easily edit the lists whilst waiting for a train, sitting on the train or otherwise with time on my hands. Not sure when the longer lists will be ready to be incorporated into the name generator, but I might add an option, so it can be set to use the current standard word lists or the much longer expanded lists

[Boodang]

We were discussing alternative names for our punk band the other day and came up with;

LSD…. standing for Leaky Sex Doll. Or just The Leaky Sex Dolls. 
We were thinking of putting a sex doll over a keyboard (nobody plays keys in the band) and letting it slowly deflate over the course of the gig. 
I do have a standards jazz project coming up and suggested it for this but apparently I’m mad (I thought it showed inspiration compared to ‘so & so’ trio!). 
Anyway, anyone is welcome to use it as it’s not been taken up (probably for good reason) but in homage you have to do at least one gig with a sex doll on stage. 

[edstraker123]

I so want to call a band Schifanoia  - named after a bus stop in France  ! Need a band first though !

[Jean-Luc Pickguard]

I’ll be sure not to include any French bus stops in my generator webapp.

[Grooverjr]

On 24/02/2025 at 17:56, Rosie C said:

 

 

Hmmm... 🤔

You just need to go all 60s, add a The and then pluralise: viz The Meat Columns. Then start a cocktail jazz trio and you'll clean up with posh hotel Brunch gigs. 

[LeftyP]

I think I may have posted about this before, but if you need ideas for a band name pop into B&Q and go to the Valspar paint counter.  They have colour cards covering the full spectrum of shades (there's a name for you!) with all sorts of creative names.  Our bathroom is painted "Harp Strings"!

[Jean-Luc Pickguard]

Good tip, but I'm lazy so I'd check out the colour names at https://www.valsparpaint.co.uk/paint-colours/

 

 

Anaemic Moon,

Scrubbed Cauliflower,

Poached Smoke,

Snowman's Bone

 

[lurksalot]

18 hours ago, Grooverjr said:

You just need to go all 60s, add a The and then pluralise: viz The Meat Columns. Then start a cocktail jazz trio and you'll clean up with posh hotel Brunch gigs. 

 

The guitarist in an old band I was in would often refer to 'The Meat Sweats'  a beautiful name for a band , but related more to when he used to have Christmas dinner at his mums house, then off to have Christmas dinner at his girlfriends parents 

[Rosie C]

5 hours ago, LeftyP said:

Our bathroom is painted "Harp Strings"!

 

The walls in my practice room are painted Harp Strings. The woodwork is Inky Prose. 

[Jean-Luc Pickguard]

36 minutes ago, lurksalot said:

 

The guitarist in an old band I was in would often refer to 'The Meat Sweats'  a beautiful name for a band , but related more to when he used to have Christmas dinner at his mums house, then off to have Christmas dinner at his girlfriends parents 

Just googled it — There's at least one band with that name

[Jean-Luc Pickguard]

I have just uploaded a new version of the band name generator.

 

This has probably around 10× the number of words as the first version. Due to the size of word list, rather than doing everything using javascript in the browser, this new version does all the clever stuff on the server in PHP. This means it is less likely to crash the browser. There is still some work to do before it is officially launched— notably I need to go through the word lists and remove a lot of the crappy/obscure/archaic words.

 

Currently I'd say the app is a fair bit less useful than the previous version due to there currently being a lot of crappy words in the source lists, but once I have edited the lists down, it should improve.

Edited yesterday at 00:34 by Jean-Luc Pickguard

[paulbuzz]

A long, long time ago (early 2000s?) I made a slightly similar thing but with a different purpose: to generate a range of the worst, most cliched and generic names for pub rock bands.
The sole aim was to make people snigger, groan, and roll their eyes.

And purely for the displeasure of Basschat, I present it here:
http://greenwax.co.uk/pubrock_bandname_generator

If you hit the refresh button a few times, you're sure to find the name of a grotty pub band you've actually seen.

And if you find the name of your own band, I apologise. You should probably change your band name. 😄
 

Edited 22 hours ago by paulbuzz

[Rosie C]

7 hours ago, paulbuzz said:

A long, long time ago (early 2000s?) I made a slightly similar thing but with a different purpose: to generate a range of the worst, most cliched and generic names for pub rock bands.
The sole aim was to make people snigger, groan, and roll their eyes.

And purely for the displeasure of Basschat, I present it here:
http://greenwax.co.uk/pubrock_bandname_generator

If you hit the refresh button a few times, you're sure to find the name of a grotty pub band you've actually seen.

And if you find the name of your own band, I apologise. You should probably change your band name. 😄
 

 

I'm going with "The Switchblade Dog Experience"  👍

[KingBollock]

I have a list of words and phrases that I often add to, that I would like to use as band names, effect pedal names or knobs on effect pedals (should I actually get around to building any more…). Some of the pedals I have built have very long and pretentious names.
Dank & Fetid Earth Beneath A Doom Coloured Sun, being a favourite. It’s two different kinds of Big Muff in one box (a Musket and a ‘73 Ram’s Head).

 

I always liked the idea of a punk band named KingBollock & The Danglies. Which sounds fun but doesn’t really work if you think about it.

 

I was once in a death metal band called Bum F#ckers From Hell. Which was suggested by a friend of the band, who was actually quite homophobic (not nastily, it was just something he couldn’t cope with. Lovely fella otherwise). Then we had an opportunity to support Bolt Thrower and suddenly everything got serious and our name got changed to Cerberus, which I wasn’t happy about. Especially as the reason we got the opportunity was because of another band supporting called Dirtbox (who were brilliant. I so wish I could find the demo of there’s that I had). Anyway, sadly, it all fell apart and it never happened.

 

Thinking of using paint names… I do a lot of model painting and use a lot of Citadel paints, which often have interesting names. I do my wife’s head in when we’re out and about and I keep pointing out and naming the colours of cars by the Citadel paint name.  The trouble is that Games Workshop are extremely litigious, so probably best not used for a band name.

 

There is actually a link between Bolt Thrower and Games Workshop/Warhammer, including their name and the release and artwork of their early albums.

Edited 18 hours ago by KingBollock

[itu]

Maybe you could use something like wiktionary.no and create heavy metal band names that are and sound weird.

 

Another way of creating a band name is to use some band's song, like: Who do you think you are.

 

...

After a while this SW starts to sound like a password creator.