What's in a (band) name?
Good Names versus Perfect Names
“What's in a name? That which we call a rose/ By any other name would smell as sweet.” from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet
Is Juliet right about that? If a Rose were called a Mold Curdle would we still love the smell? Maybe…
A recent conversation around band names kicked off on Twitter this afternoon thanks to Agnes Callard:
It got me wondering if picking a good band name is actually easy, or if picking a name that sounds like a good band name is in fact what is easy. In my own experience hunting for the perfect band name (or name for some side-project / product I am working on), I find it a fairly easy and fast process to generate a long list of goodish names. These are the typical types of band names, with slight personalization. As Gareth points out, they usually involve some type of noun and adjective combination (The Flaming Lips, The Talking Heads, Japanese Breakfast). Of course there are some fun variations. You have the puns (The Beatles), the Adjective onlys (Rancid, Bad Bad Not Good), the rare extended phrase or command (Rage Against the Machine, Built to Spill) and so on. I’d love to see more adverb bands (dearly, yesterday, well, nicely, soon). One good adverb band example is Alvvays, which gets bonus points for the double v’s1.
The list of good band names tend to all work in that they are easy to hear, Google, are crisp, and in the neighborhood of the vibe I like. But I've found it exceedingly difficult to find the perfect name, the one that once discovered instantly clicks into place. The name I just know is the one. In short all those characteristics that define a good band name are necessary but not sufficient. The perfect name transcends what is technically good generically by being specifically good for the project and person (or people) working on the thing. I've come up with those kind of names before and it's one of those "you'll know it's right when it's right" type of situations.
One feature of perfect names is that you will immediately stop pining for other ideas. When you stumble upon a perfect name, you don't feel compelled to keep brainstorming alternatives. Because of this, you already know the name is wrong if you're wondering if it is right. ChromeGPT was instantly right for my ChatGPT Chrome Extension. Printernet was instantly right for my printed magazine via RSS feed project. Cubicle was perfect for my 90's themed remote work tool. Yet I still find myself searching for alternatives for a few of my other active projects like Soon, Reading This, and Reco (a listen later tool for podcasts, linktree for your current reading recs, and email for recommendations only). So I know those aren't quite perfect.
There is also a class of projects that are born entirely from a name. It can be fun to pick a name first and then build the project around that, even if you ultimately don't pursue it. In other words working in reverse, instead of finding the name that fits the project, finding the project that fits the name. For instance, if I threw out the name Slingshot, what would you make that would perfectly fit that name? A fashionable camera bag? A single button for automating your giant to-do list (think David and Goliath), a marketplace for "launching" your ideas? None of these are inspiring me to make them, but wouldn't it be interesting to keep thinking of projects until one did?This is sorta circling back to the power of prompting yourself into creativity.
One thing I know for certain from experience is the importance of a name. I've felt in my own life the change that occurs after I find the right name for something. There are practical reasons for this, like file naming. But there is also something harder to explain that has to do with legitimizing the status of something from an idea to an actual project. This gets at my recent thinking on the power of "formalizing your explorations".
This isn't about making your ideas stuffier, higher status, or introducing more overhead. It is about giving yourself a signal that an idea is worthy of a name. Before you find a band name, you and your friends are "just jamming". Before you find a name for your side-project it's just "this thing I'm working on". Think of the difference between a "gap year" or "sabbatical" and "not going to college" or "time off". Recognize the way you naturally want to plan your "gap year" or "sabbatical" versus the alternative more ambiguous names. When you give yourself a framing tool like a name as the container that formalizes your tinkering, you raise your own conceptions of what you are working on or doing, which signals that the container is worthy of more ideas and higher ambition. I think that has power that is tricky to explain. Of course a lot of the power around names (like my "gap year" versus "not going to college" example) is purely powered by social signaling. I mostly try to ignore that aspect, but should recognize that it affects all of us. How others respond to your projects or current thing certainly affects how you view them yourself (even if you aim to minimize that effect). But that gives us another sign we found the perfect name. When you find the perfect name, you tend to love it even when others say they don't. The impulse to defend it or change it vanishes.
A lot of this area of exploring the power of names is more generally the reality that the way in which ideas are framed drastically changes how humans respond to those ideas (i.e survey design). The crucial insight is to recognize that this works when framing things for yourself too. In that way, it can be extremely worth forcing yourself to reframe ideas to yourself. For example try reframing some concept you naturally dislike into something you can support. The difference between the normal framing that produced distaste and the reframing that didn't is the important nuance you feel was missing from the original. This works with names. Articulating what you don't like about a name is the map to the perfect name. But I will say that in my experience the map can only take you to within a few square miles of the perfect name. Ultimately you have to feel your way to the final destination.
There is more interesting territory here that I will plan to return to. For instance I am thinking of the almost universal references to the power of knowing the name of something within various mythologies, the reliance on naming for magic, and Adam and Eve giving names to things in Genesis. But I will save that for another time!
I think a perfect band name is like naming a child or beloved pet, it can't just be good generally, it has to be good to you personally. And that, like all things which involve knowing yourself and your vibes well, is tricky.
Our design and engineering company was called Meanwhile, a beautiful adverb inspired from the Penny Lane lyric “There beneath the blue suburban skies I sit and meanwhile back…”