"If you told Rodrick how 'Loaded Diaper' is really spelled, it would be news to him."
"...take a really cool word but then spell it all wrong. You know, like... 'Lazor', or 'Bigg Nife', or something like 'Taranchula', or maybe like 'Limozeen'..."
Sometimes musicians like to make their band's name oddly spelled for one main reason: It's cool. note
A combination of Xtreme Kool Letterz, often Funetik Aksent and My Nayme Is, and bonus points if they have a Heävy Mëtal Ümlaut. This type of band name is usually associated with music movements like Hair Metal and the New Wave of British Heavy Metal, but can be used with any type of rock music (and probably any kind of music at all).
Subtrope of Xtreme Kool Letterz and My Nayme Is when applied to music.
Examples:
Music
- The Beatles, playing with "beat", is probably the Ur-Example.
- John Lennon would irreverently explain the band's name thusly:
Lennon: One day a man on a flaming pie came down and said to us "From now on you are Beatles with an 'a'". We said "Thank you, Mr. Man."
- One anecdotal story was that when Apple Records band The Iveys wanted to change its name, Lennon suggested The Prixnote , suspecting full well that the music press, like as in the reason Led Zeppelin deliberately misspelt their name so that people would give it the proper pronunciation, would predictably get the name wrong anyway.note . The name the band would settle on would be Badfinger.
- Similarly, Phil Lynott named his band Thin Lizzy as a riff on the way the Irish would pronounce "thin" as "tin".note
- John Lennon would irreverently explain the band's name thusly:
- Led Zeppelin, probably the Trope Maker and/or Codifier. Originally meant so that "thick Americans" wouldn't mispronounce "lead".
- Amorphis
- Do music labels count? There we have "Ata Tak" (=art attack).
- Basement Jaxx
- The Black Crowes
- Blessid Union of Souls
- Bomshel, a short-lived country music group.
- Bon Iver ("bon hiver" is French for "good winter")
- German example: the band Böhse Onkelz's name should be spelled "Böse Onkels."
- brokeNCYDE
- The Byrds
- Caramell, the band responsible for the song behind a certain animation meme. The Swedish word is properly spelled "karamell".
- Carissa's Wierd
- Chantoozies
- CHVRCHES: They've said the "v" is meant to be a roman numeral 5, and that the entire reason for spelling it that way is to make it easier to search for information about them online; If you just typed "churches" into a search engine, you'd mainly get sites about actual churches.
- The Cyrkle ("Red Rubber Ball"). John Lennon gave them the suggestion to spell their name that way.
- Def Leppard
- Eazy-E
- Epik High
- Eurythmics, after the eurhythmics musical teaching method.
- New Wave band the Fixx added an extra "x" to their name to avoid the drug use connotations of "fix" as a noun.
- G-Eazy
- Gotye (a phonetic spelling of "Gauthier", the French equivalent of the singer's given name, "Wouter", which is the Dutch equivalent of "Walter")
- Green Jellÿ, with an umlaut over the Y. Originally they were "Green Jellö", but had to change it for trademark reasons; they claim a Y with an umlaut is pronounced like an O.
- Hanzel und Gretyl
- Hurriganes
- Inkubus Sukkubus (Pagan/goth rock)
- The Insyderz (Christian rock/ska example)
- INXS
- Jackyl
- Jypsi, another short-lived country music group.
- Kamelot
- Koo De Tah
- Kool & the Gang
- KoRn
- Kutless (another Christian Rock example - derived from "cut less", not the naval sword)
- The Kovenant: They were called Covenant at first until sued by another band with the same name.
- Limp Bizkit
- Linkin Park. Spelled that way not because they thought it looked 'cool', but because lincolnpark.com was already taken.
- The band's original name was Xero.
- LP's bassist, Dave "Phoenix" Farrell, was previously part of a little known band called Tasty Snax.
- The band's original name was Xero.
- Lipps, Inc.
- Lorde: A feminized version of "Lord". Chosen because she thought an aristocratic name sounded cool, but just "Lord" by itself sounded too masculine.
- Ludacris
- Lynyrd Skynyrd. Leonard Skinner was a gym teacher at the band members' high school who informed them that they would never amount to anything.
- Suthrn Cuzn, a Clubbo Records parody of Lynyrd Skynyrd
- Major Lazer
- Malfunkshun, whose frontman Andrew Wood would later form Mother Love Bone and be eulogized by Pearl Jam and Soundgarden in Temple of the Dog
- Marmozets
- Megadeth
- Megan Thee Stallion (pronounced Megan the Stallion)
- The Monkees (a pop rock example)
- And Gorillaz got their name from the Monkees.
- Mötley Crüe
- Nu Shooz
- Paramore
- The Pharcyde
- Phish: Though they've given other origin stories, the most commonly accepted one is that it's just a misspelled variation on a nickname for their drummer, Jon Fishman.
- Polysics (named after their first keyboard, misspelled to avoid copyright)
- The animated band Prozzäk.
- Prymary Colorz
- Rammstein is called that way because the band members literally misspelled the name rather than it being a conscious decision. The band took the name from the German air base where the 1988 air show disaster took place but that name is spelled with only one M (Ramstein). According to Paul they didn't know this and accidentally spelled it with two M's instead. However, in a cool twist of fate Rammstein is perfectly fine German for a "ramming stone", or in other words a Battering Ram.
- Redd Kross originally averted this, but had to change when the real Red Cross objected.
- Red Sparowes. The spelling seems like a parody of The Black Crowes, a more well-known rock/blues band.
- Relient K (based on a slogan for the K Car one of the band members drove, making this another example of Writing Around Trademarks)
- Russell Moore and IIIrd Tyme Out… a bluegrass group.
- Scaterd Few
- Since Slade loved to deliberately misspell their song titles ("Gudbuy T'Jane") during their Glam Rock phase, their album title Slayed? implies that the band name might actually be a misspelling, too.
- Split Enz: They originally averted the trope (as Split Ends), but later changed the spelling to honor their home country of New Zealand.
- Staind
- The Dukes of Stratosphear (XTC's psychedelic alter-egos)
- Stryper
- TechN9ne
- Templeton Pek. Exactly.
- Trapt
- 2NE1
- The Weeknd
- Y Kant Tori Read
- In the crossover with KISS, Vampirella plays in "Witchkraft".
- Wyld Stallyns (*air guitar*) from Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure.
- Mark from Empire Records wants to call his band... Marc.
- At the end of Hot Tub Time Machine, Lou's foreknowledge of the future has allowed him to make some changes, including becoming the lead singer of Mötley Crüe but named Mötley Loü this time.
- Rock of Ages has the Boy Band Z-Guyeezz which is pronounced the way it's spelled. "Double the E, double the Z, double the flava!" They share their producer with the hard rock band Arsenal whose lead singer's name is spelled Stacee Jaxx. (Totally no pattern here.)
- Dethdestro from Star Wreck 5: Lost Contact.
- The Oneders/Wonders from That Thing You Do! - there's a Running Gag early in the movie about other characters trying to pronounce it as it's spelled ("the oh-needers"), which leads to them spelling it the conventional way.
- Before Thorsten Bage joined Fraktus, they called themselves Freakazzée.
- In the Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, Rodrick plays in a band called Löded Diper. Greg points out that, even though everyone assumes Rodrick spelled it that way to make it look cool, it's highly possible that he just doesn't know the real spelling.
- In Soul Music, CMOT Dibbler, faced with a band of trolls who say they're called Trolls, suggests it would be more Music With Rocks In if they were Trollz.
- In War for the Oaks, Eddi, the protagonist starts out the novel as a member of Stuart Kline's band InKline Plain. It's described as "the most misspelled band in Minneapolis".
- In the Wolves of Mercy Falls Series, Cole St. Clair is a member of NARKOTIKA. Word of God states that it's in all caps, because "IT'S LOUDER THAT WAY."
- Parodied in The Coodabeen Champions Take a Good Hard Look at Australia: Hymie from Heidelberg tries to take advantage of his son's poor spelling to make bootleg Def Leppard T-Shirts, only for him to spell "Deaf Leopard" correctly.
- Mystery Science Theater 3000 had "Spydor" (in Earth vs. the Spider), "Hee-La" (in The Giant Gila Monster) and "Santa Claws" (in Santa Claus (1959)).
- ' 'Altar Boyz''
- Brütal Legend had the Kabbage Boy. And Ironheade, though it was less of a band and more of a band-styled army.
- In Homestar Runner, Strong Bad describes this phenomenon when asked by an emailer how to choose a good band name. Within a couple years, Limozeen and Taranchula would both go on to become "real" bands in-universe, with actual music produced. Bigg Nife took a good deal longer to emerge as a "real" band, appearing over a decade later on the Trogdor Rulebook EP. The remaining band, Lazor, has been mentioned, but we have yet to see or hear them.
- Djörk from PvP.
- Daria has Mystik Spiral (but they're thinking of changing the name).
- In Gravity Falls, we have &ndra (pronounced "ampersandra") and Sev'ral Timez, the latter crossed with Punctuation Shaker.
- The eponymous Grojband, which is derived from "Garage Band".
- Dethklok from Metalocalypse. 'Death Clock' is A Good Name for a Rock Band. So good, they had to spell it 'Dethklok' because there is a Real Life thing named 'Death Clock' already!note
- Love Händel, the Fake Band from Phineas and Ferb.
