How To Think of a Good Band Name

Before we get anyone saying “wait a minute…you can’t teach someone how to come up with a band name” we want to say, chillax brohemian. This post is merely for people who either can’t come up with a good name or just may want some suggestions. We are by no means saying this is how all bands get named or that this is the only way to do it.

For those of you who may be interested, Seeing Double was by no means our original group name. As a matter of fact we probably had ten other names through our existence, but we’ll mention that a bit later. If you’re in a band of two, three, four, or more members the first thing you can do is think of what you all might have in common. Ex: at one point the group my brother and I are in was called 8:30 Tuesdays. Sound kinda silly? Well the reason for it was that all three of us (there was a third member for a brief period) had a class freshman year on Tuesdays at 8:30 a.m. (I know, brutal). At the time we thought it was pretty cool, but we have since changed our minds.

Another thing you can do, which is pretty popular these days, is just name it after your lead singer. Jack Johnson, Dave Matthews [Band], Alanis Morissette, Sean Kingston, etc. have all done it. You do want to be careful that you don’t alienate the rest of your group members, so definitely have a consensus. Also, if your lead singers name is Pontiface Fluederschmintel (apologies to all the Pontiface Fluederschmintel’s out there, your names are beautiful) you might run into some trouble promoting your band.

The third suggestion we can make is to think of an interesting play on words that might be associated to your band somehow. Ex: Seeing Double (how convenient). While you might be seeing double because you just got punched in the face or your eye-sight isn’t that great, in our case you’re looking at identical twins. Some other examples are Eminem, The Beatles, Nickelback etc. NickelBack is actually an interesting story. Band member Mike Kroeger used to work at a coffee shop and would always say “here’s your nickel back” when giving change. See, a relatively simple story made for a pretty cool band name. By the way you can also just make up a word. Guster, Nada Surf, Moby, Mika, Kutless, etc. are all pretty interesting, so as long as you have a decent story behind it why not?

The main thing that you should remember when coming up with a band name is to keep it marketable. That simply means that make sure it’s easy to remember, easy to pronounce, relatively short, and has some back story to it. When we were thinking of names for our band we would picture what it would sound like if we were being announced to come on stage. That’s a good way of weeding out awkward band titles. Some of the names that we considered before sticking with Seeing Double were Belamerica, Square One, Twins With Matching Pants (bad idea), and the list goes on. In the end we chose a name that we both connected with and one that will hopefully stay with us through our music career.

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