Making fun of music, one song at a time. Since the year 2000.
Check out the two amIright misheard lyrics books including one book devoted to misheard lyrics of the 1980s.
Names -> Band Name Origins -> M, Page 2
Do you know why a band picked out it's name? Feel free to let us know.
I can't verify all of these stories, so do take them with a grain of salt. I try and delete the ones that I know to be bogus, but I don't know the origins of every band name (and some bands intentionally tell different stories about picking their band name).
Latest Entries
Entries starting with M are split into multiple pages: 1 2 3 4
There are 4771 Band Name Origin entries on the site.
Name | Origin | Submitted by: | ||
| MDC | "Millions of Dead Cops", "Multi-Death Corporation", "Millions of Dead Chickens", etc.. depending on which of their albums you look at. | Bobo | ||
| Meat Loaf | Yes, it was giving in his childhood, but only after his head was run over by a car. His friends said his head would turn to meatloaf if he let the car run it over. But got up a little dazed an unharmed after being run over, and the nickname was born. | KVC44 | ||
| Meat Loaf | Meat Loaf was given that nickname as a child from a gym teacher in his school. I read that from a book of band name origins. | Nick Mancini | ||
| Meat Loaf | This was actually a nickname given to him by his highschool football coach. | Dude | ||
| Meat Loaf | Various stories, the most common being due to his rather large size. The rumor that it is his favorite dish is false, as he's a vegetarian. | LeGhul | ||
| Meat Loaf | A childhood nickname due to his obesity. | ChrisPC | ||
| Meat Loaf | The actual complete band name is "Meat Loaf and the Neverland Express." "Meat Loaf" is Marvin Aday's (Meat Loaf) childhood nickname that his alcoholic father called him to tease Meat about his weight. The "Neverland Express" part deals with Meat's songwriter, Jim Steinman, and how he's obsessed with Peter Pan and the idea of Neverland, including the broadway show "Neverland." | Eric D. | ||
| Meat Puppets | Meat Puppets are drugged prostitutes in the William Gibson novel "Neuromancer". | Jeb | ||
| Meat Puppets | Brothers Curt and Cris Kirkwood always liked to annoy their mother by taking out their (manhoods) and making them talk in high pitched funny voices at the dinner table when they were pre-teens. They both remembered that name "Meat Puppets" when it came time to start a rock and roll band together. (It was a random song title on their first punk hardcore release as well.) | Lil' Tom | ||
| Meat Puppets | I had implied that the name came from the William Gibson novel "Neuromancer" yesterday. After about 10 seconds of googling I realize that Gibson probably got the name from them, as the book came out in 1984 and they had been performing with that name since '80. As Gilda Radner would say-"nevermind." | Jeb | ||
| Mechanical Monkey God | They where in the backyard of Infra's house thinking about religion and determined that god was mechanical and he was a monkey. | Absent | ||
| Medicine Gone | The singer/guitar player's wife often stopped taking the meds that kept her sane, at which point all hell would break lose. He wrote the songs as a sort of therapy for himself, whenever her medicine was gone. | Rik | ||
| Meet Danny Wilson | Named after a Frank Sinatra movie | Richard Garcia | ||
| Megadeth | Megadeth was originally the name of a fictional band on a National Lampoon Radio Hour sketch. Then Dave Mustaine borrowed the name for his real band. | Tim Horrigan | ||
| Megadeth | Dave Mustane had fliped open a newspaper and saw something like "Many die in a megadeath". He liked it so he made it in to his band name , just took out the "A" in death. | MetalHed99 | ||
| Megadeth | Dave Mustaine saw it in a newspaper "the arsenal of megadeath can't be rid" or something really close to that. He used it as a song name, but then used it as the band name. He took out th "A" cuz he thought it looked cheesy with it. | The Funt | ||
| Megadeth | They got their name from one of Dave Mustaine's songs that was changed to "Set the World Afire" | joe | ||
| Megadeth | The word "megadeath" means "the death of a million people", like something that would be caused by an atom bomb. They used the word (surely fitting to their subject matter), and just took out the "e" to be unique. | xThrashxTillxDeathx | ||
| Megadeth | After Mustaine was kicked out of Metallica, on the bus ride home to San Fran. He was scribbling lyrics on the back of a pamphlet, after he got bored doin that he flipped it over and it was a summary of the worlds population in Megadeaths (a million people killed by a nuclear blast) and that was what he named the song he wrote on the back of the pamphlet, that didn't fit so the song title changed to "set the world afire" and Megadeth (minus the A) was a fitting name for a speed metal band | Potato Masher | ||
| Megadeth | Dave Mustaine chose this because the name already had a history. It was the original name of Pink Floyd before they became Pink Floyd. | Kaptin Kirk | ||
| Meleefox | The band thought it was rather cool to have a band with the name Melee in it, so therefore randomly chose "fox". The drummer of the band still insists to this day that it is because - " its a fox that beats people up". | Rabbit | ||
| The Melvins | They named their band after a mentally handicapped Thriftway employee called Melvin, who liked to climb on roofs. | The Misa | ||
| Melvins | from themelvins.net: "The name Melvins came from a grocery clerk at the Thriftway in Montesano where King Buzzo served as clerk and vandal. Melvin was the most hated fellow employee and they felt it to be an appropriately ridiculous name." | poot | ||
| The Melvins | buzz osbourne is a huge fan of MAD magazine, especially the original EC comic books. the name melvin appears on the cover of the first issue, and in almost every issue after that. ain't nuffin' to do with no underwears. sorry. | the glaive | ||
| The Melvins | Another name for a "wedgie", which is pulling up an underwear's elastic band over someone's head so that his butt cheeks are exposed. "Melvin" was made famous from the "Bill & Ted" movies. | newrock | ||
| Men At Work | Brian is right. Road workers in Australia seem to be extremley lazy. Not uncommon to see this sight. | alpal | ||
| Men At Work | Lead singer Colin Hay was driving past a construction site and saw a sign that said "Men At Work". One man was digging a ditch while nine others were just standing around. | Brian Kelly | ||
| The Men They Couldn't Hang | From the story of John 'Babbacombe' Lee, nicknamed The Man They Could Not Hang as the gallows failed to work. Fairport Convention's 'Babbacombe Lee' album was about it. | pickle* | ||
| Men Without Hats. | They're originally from Montreal, Canada; where the local subway system is constantly under renovation. Everytime they would go into a station, they would see a cordoned-off area with a sign showing a man's head wearing a hard hat. (meaning that hard hats were required to enter the roped-off area) They sort-of injected the "do your own thing" spirit of the 1980's into this quirk of their daily lives, by naming themselves "Men Without Hats". (In fact, the symbol of their band is identical to the "hard hat" symbol on the Montreal subway ----except it has a red diagonal slash through it). --If you don't believe me, check out their site at www.menwithouthats.com | Edward A. Vazquez | ||
| Meriwether | The lead singer is a direct descendent of Meriwether Lewis. | i like bunny pjs | ||
| Meshuggah | Meshuggah is "Madness" or "Crazy" or "Insane" in Hebrew. | Stengah | ||
| Meshuggah | Meshuggah is Yiddish for "Crazy". | Word | ||
| MEST | the band was about 15 and they were sitting around one day when some kid came up to them and was like 'wats your bands name?" and they were like "uh... MEST" they got it from the beer they used to drink while they hung out. Milwaukee's Best Beer. they took the M from "Milwaukee" and replaced the B from "Best" with it so they became MEST | Andrea from Random Fact | ||
| Mest | The band was getting drunk in Tony Lovato's (lead singer/guitarist) garage one day. They were drinking Milwaukee's Best. They took the M from Milwaukee and EST from Best and got Mest. Its also thought that one of the members tried to ask for another beer and slurred the words together to get MEST. | fuctupgrl | ||
| Metallica | There was a music magazine called "Metallica". Lars just liked the name, and that's where they got it. Source: "VH1-Behind The Music: Metallica". | Neto | ||
| Metallica | A freind of the band Ron Queintana was making a metal zine and was trying to come up with a name. Lars being present the name METALLICA came up. That sly Lars suggested another name and took metallica home to James saving the best band ever form one of the stupidest names ever Red Corvette! | THE DANIEL | ||
| Metallica | Brian Slagel, a friend of drummer Lars Ulrich, was forming a metalzine and askes Lars to choose a name for it. He had 'Metal Mania' and 'Metallica'. Lars was looking for a name for his *to form* band, and was really into 'Metallica'. So he told his friend Brian to choose Metal Mania, so he could have Metallica for himself. | Sylvy | ||
| Metallica | I read that Metallica's original name was "Metallic", and when Lars would say the name of the band, he would ad an "Ahh" at the end of it, forming "Metallica", and it stuck. | Chris | ||
| Metallica | Ron Quintana was the friend who asked Lars for help in choosing a name for his metalzine, not Brian Slagel. The rest of the second submission is correct. | royhighryder | ||
| Metallica | Lars Ulrich had a friend who was about to start a metal fa-zine and came to him with the question "What do you think about METALLICA". Then our devilish danish friend quickly proposed something different and kept MetallicA for himself. | Disposable^Hero | ||
| Metallica | Lars Ulrich stole it from a man that was trying to form a metal fanzine | clint | ||
| Metallica | It's a combination of the band's favorite things: Metal and Liquor. Hence, Metallica! | Mike | ||
| metallica | Slagel got the name Metallica from a "bible of metal" (if you will) that existed at the time called Encyclopedia Metallica, obviously a play on Encyclopedia Britannica | pyroteknician | ||
| Metallica | Well they liked metallic colors then they thought they knew spanish so they added an A at the end | ZaQuisha | ||
| Metallica | Lars Ulrich's mate was thinking of names to call an underground metal magazine "MetallicA" was one of them, Lars liked the sound of it and quickly suggested another name for the magazine and kept "MetallicA" for himself! | mark | ||
| Metallica | James Hetfield was walking down the street and saw a man licking a poll. He thought of Metal Licka and eventually formed Metallica. | yourworstnightmareswirstnightmar | ||
| Metallica | NO they didnt like metallic colors and no they didnt think they could speak french!...Lars was talking to someone he knew in San Fran who was gonna start a magazine called metallica...lars decides he likes the name and keeps it as the bands | Not Tellin | ||
| Metallica | Before Lars Ulrich stole the proposed name of Brian Slagel's fanzine, they were originally going to call the band "Red Corvette". | Jedi Master Sharp | ||
| Metallica | The magazine story is true, but I think the last question we want to be pondering here is origin of the word "Metallica". I heard on another website that "Metallica" is a coining of the two words "metal" and "vodka". | Kyle | ||
| Metallica | Lars "borrowed" the name "Metallica" from his friend Ron Quintana (not Brian Slagel). Ron eventually went on to use the name "Metal Mania" instead for his new magazine. | Metallisteve | ||
| Method Man | Method is one of many Shaolin slang words for marijuana, due the fact that he smoked so much of the good weed, Clifford Smith was given this name. | Augustus Del Monte | ||
| MFSB | Actually stood for Mother F***n' Son of a B***h, but for modesty's sake they changed it to "Mothers, Fathers, Sisters and Brothers". | soul | ||
| MFSB & The Three Degrees | Most people beleive that it stood for "Mother F***in' Son of a B****." In reality it stood for Mothers, Fathers, Sisters, Brothers. | Scott | ||
| MIB | Most Incredible Busterz (originally Bastardz) | Robert D. Arndt Jr. | ||
| Michael Learns To Rock | This is the Danish Group Band, This band was learning to rock music in early days. | Muhammad Firza | ||
| Midge Ure | Born James Ure. He went by Jim, spelled it backwards to create Mij, and finally changed that to Midge. | Hello | ||
| Midnight Oil | "Burning The Midnight Oil" means working as hard as you can. Even continue working at night. | Flo | ||
| The Mighty McFly | They are a US band, who were just called "McFly", but a UK band had the same name. So they changed their name to "The Mighty McFly" so as not to breach copyright. | Tony | ||
| Mighty Mighty Bosstones | Origianlly this Boston based band was named The Bosstones. But the band found out that a barbershop quartet was named that as well. So the band got together and added Might Mighty In front of it. | TXCHAINSKAMASSACRE | ||
| MILK | The band narrowed down a long list of names to two. After thinking about it, however, Sig Figs or Synergy just didn't feel right. So on a stroke of inspiration one of the members recalled the name MILK and it stuck. The name is unanimously attributed to band member Shaun Bailey (or Chocolate Milk). | Shaun Bailey | ||
| Millencolin | A Swedish skatepunk band who is growing in size in the States. Their name is from a skateboard trick named 'melancholy'. | Adam Hahne | ||
| millencolin | millencolin, are swedish, and they skate, there is a skate trick called a sad air/meloncholy, they changed meloncholy to millencolin, and guess what...it stuck!!! | jonny | ||
| Millencolin | All of them beig skaters (appart from Larzon the drummer) they named themselvs after the skateboarding trick the "melancholy" but changed some of the letters to sound like a band name. Contrary to opular belief This does not have any meaning in sweedish. | Master P | ||
| Millencolin | This is taken straight from the official website: "We got the name from the skatetrick ?Melancholy? (also known as sad air), but we changed the spelling a bit so it sounds more like a name." | Androdaking | ||
| Millencolin | since all the guys was skaters they decided to take a cool skateboard name. so their first idea was from the trick "melancholy" but they did'nt like the spelling so they changed it to "millencolin" | anton | ||
| Millencolin | Millencolin got their name fom a skate trick called 'melancholy'. | Emil Bihl | ||
| Milli Vanilli | In the metric system, a Milli Vanilli is 1/1000 of a vanilli. Rob & Fab broke up the name into two words because it was easier to pronounce that way. | Tim Horrigan | ||
| Million Dead | They got their name from a lyric from a song by the Swedish band Refused. The song was "The Apollo Programme Was A Hoax" and the line is: "Suck on my words for a while and choke on the truth of a million dead" | Natalia | ||
| million dead | being greatly inspired by hardcore band refused, million dead took their name from the line "Suck on my words for a while, choke in the truth of a million dead." from the refused song "the apollo space program was a hoax". The name was decided about 20 minutes before their first gig. | david | ||
| A Million To One | The mmbers had a bad school year, and they had no friends (At The Time) so they felt alone. that is the origin of A Million To One, which I am part of. | T.J. Spindler | ||
| Mind Benders | This 60's band that appeared as themselves in the film "To Sir, With Love" was named after a 1962 British horror movie. | Robert D. Arndt Jr. | ||
| Mind Garage | Mind Garage is the first documented Christian Rock band from 1967. Reverend Michael Paine suggested the band put Christian words to rock and roll. The band and their fans was more on the intellectual side, and the Reverend's wife Tori named the band in reference to an abstract garage, your mind, where you keep things, ideas. Documentation that Mrs Paine named the band is from newspaper clippings on the band's website, www.mindgarage.com | Larry | ||
| Mindless Self Indulgence | in an interview, Lil Jimmy Urine said that it 'basically describes the kind of music we play' | absent | ||
| Mindless Self Indulgence | "...happiness-- not pain or mindless self-indulgence -- is the proof of your moral integrity, since it is the proof and the result of your loyalty to the achievement of your values" - Atlas Shrugged (p. 1059) | Prizzle | ||
| Mindless Self Indulgence | From the CD Mindless Self-Indulgence, a solo album by Jimmy Urine recorded in the mid-1990s. | Travis | ||
| Ministry | Al Jourgensen took the name from a movie called The Ministry of Fear. | Ben | ||
| Minus The Bear | From the TV show "BJ and the Bear", "minus the bear", leaving BJ to the imagination. | Miguel | ||
| Minutemen | In their early days, hardly any of their songs were more than a minute long. Their debut EP, "Paranoid Time," had seven songs that only added up to 6:31 of running time. | plasket | ||
| Minutemen | (Paraphrased from "Our band could be your life", by Michael Azerrad): Minutemen Singer/Guitarist D.Boon picked the name from a long list bass player Mike Watt had made. The name appealed to Boon not only because of the fabled Revolutionary War milita, but because it had also been used by a right-wing reactionary group of the 60's. Contrary to popular belief, the Minutemen were not named for the brevity of their songs. | TRM | ||
| Minutemen | Once interveiwed, Mike Watt explained the band title as an allusion to the fabled revolutionary army of the Apalachians. It was a reference to the unrelenting intensity to which they held their ideals and their readyness to deffend those ideals. (Or something like that) -Michael Azerrad's Our Band Could Be Your Life -a kickass book | slam voncramer | ||
| Minutemen | The Minutemen were actually named after an ultra-conservative American terrorist group that mailed bomb threats to radicals during the 60's. This is contrary to the urban legend that they were named after their musical brevity. | Cameron | ||
| The Miracle Workers | The name comes from a song released by The Chocolate Watchband called "I Ain't No Miracle Worker". The guys were sitting around in the bass player's house listening to '60s garage rock when someone put a 45 of this song on the turntable. | Dr. Boogie | ||
| The Misfits | The band got it's name from Marilyn Monroe's last movie "The Misifts". Since Glenn Danzig was a big Marilyn Monroe fan, the band even thanked the cast of the movie on their first album. | Jay | ||
| The Misfits | I guess they were just a bunch of misfits. | Art Vandale | ||
| Misfits | The name Misfits was the final film Marilyn Monroe was in. | Naki | ||
| The Misfits | Glenn Danzig, the lead singer of the Misfits from 1976-1983, had a great obsession with Marylin Monroe. "The Misfits" was Marylin's last movie. | psycho78m | ||
| The Misfits | They named themselves after the last movie that Marylin Monroe did, also starring Clark Gabel. They thanked the cast on the cover of their first relase. | rob | ||
| Miss A | Short for Miss Asia | Robert D. Arndt Jr. | ||
| The Mission | Lead singer Wayne Hussey was brought up in a Mormon family and when he became a teenager, he was expected to be a "missionary" in the religious sense. Also, as a child he had a stereo system made by a company called "Mission". | H-J | ||
| Mission UK | The Mission were a spin-off band of the Sister of Mercy. The Sister of Mercy were on the verge of breaking up when the singer, Andrew Eldridge , had a heart attack. While hospitalized, the rest of the band began to play gigs without him. Their newly hired guitarist, Wayne Hussey (formerly of Dead or Alive) took over singing vocals in place of Andrew. When Andrew found out from his hospital bed, he brought a lawsuit against his band mates because he owned the copyright to the name "Sister of Mercy". His former band mates then tried to tour as the Sisterhood, the name of the Sisters of Mercy fan club, and Andrew sued again. To cover his bases, Andrew gave some songs he'd written to a group of friends, and produced an album from his hospital bed titled "the Sisterhood" and released it in a matter of weeks to assure that his former band mates would be able to capitalize through association with him. When the courts ruled in Andrew's favor, the former band mates then changed their new bands name to the Mission because the Sisters of Mercy had just finish tour dates under the moniker of "the Mission of Mercy Tour", but when they tried to distribute their albums in the US, there was already a gospel group that owned a copyright to the name "the Mission" so they had to append "UK" to the end of their name to satisfy US copyrights. | Chris | ||
| Mithras | Mithras was a secret roman/persian god who represented both light, and honesty. He was worshipped by traders, merchants, and mainly soldiers. Imperator decided to change their name to Mithras, as they found it would suit their music. (Imperator was a name for a Roman emperor during times of war) | Nazarene | ||
| MKTO | It was formed out of the initials of the two members - Malcolm Kelley and Tony Oller. | Dongquan | ||
| Mo Burton Society | Also known as MBS, the band members went with the name from a story told by the lead man in the band. When he was in middle school, lead man Blake's drama class was performing for younger kindergarten children, when all of a sudden some of the kids started yelling out in the middle of the performance that "Mo Burton rules! . . . who cares about plays, we love Mo Burton!, he lives forever" He never found out who Mo Burton was, but he and the other guys decided to use that name as the quintessential name or psuedonym for everything in which they didn't want to use their real names. Mo Burton Society is the society where people are all friends, sort of a utopia deal. (I should know this, I AM the kid from the story). | Stafford Boy | ||
| Moby | He named himself after a book one of his ancestors wrote, "Moby Dick". That's right, he's descended from Herman Melville. | Brian Kelly | ||
| Moby | In an interview with Spin magazine, Moby said he picked it as an acronym for Master of Beats Y'all. | gwen | ||
| Moby | Moby's(born: Richard Melville Hall) name is refering to his great great grand uncle Herman Melville who wrote the book "Moby Dick". When he was young, his parents decided that a name like Richard is to big for a baby like him, so they gave him the nick name of Moby. | ww's sketcher | ||
| Moby Grape | What's purple and floats in the sea? According to guitarist Peter Lewis, the punchline to the above 60's joke was the brainstorm of bassist Bob Moseley and guitarist Skip Spence. | Peter Vann | ||
| Modest Mouse | The Issaquah band's name is play on the name of 19th Century Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky. Mussorgsky is probably best known for his piano suite "Pictures at an Exhibition" and it's famous Promenade theme; it is perhaps best known to modern audiences in it's orchestral form arranged by Ravel in 1918. | Marshall | ||
| Modest Mouse | A pun on 19th-century Russian composer Modest Moussorgsky, who wrote, among other things, "Pictures at an Exhibition." | Jim | ||
| Modest Mouse | Singer / Frontman Isaac Brocke had a pet mouse that was kept in the garage where jam sessions were practiced. One day it got out and somehow didn't get caught in the mouse traps in the garage. The following evening, Modest Mouse went to the pet store to buy more mouse food, and on the way they smashed their van. At the junkyard, they caught another pet mouse and the mice had mouse babies. The babies were then sold off to be new equipment. When asked how they could afford it, they said, "Well, the modest mouse didn't eat the cheese!" Thus we have Modest Mouse. | Mills |
Entries starting with M are split into multiple pages: 1 2 3 4
New entries in this section are currently reviewed by Brian Kelly. Previous editors (if any) are listed on the editors page.
Submissions
Got something that should be added to this page? Check out the submission form.