Band Names
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
50 free Band Names trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Every band name is a small story. Some were lifted from a novel or a film, some from a shop sign or a dull official document, and a few were insults the musicians decided to keep. Others only arrived after a run of earlier names that nobody remembers now. This quiz covers both sides of the subject. Some questions ask you to complete the band name with its missing word. Others ask where a name came from, what the group was called before it was famous, or what a foreign or abbreviated name actually means. The bands run from sixties rock through punk, grunge and boy bands to modern pop. It suits music fans warming up for a pub quiz round and anyone curious about why a group is called what it is. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you leave with the story as well as the score.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01On which household appliance did Angus and Malcolm Young's sister spot the letters AC/DC?
Sewing machine
A sewing machine belonging to Margaret Young carried the AC/DC symbol on its power adapter, and her brothers took the label as the name of their new band.
Q 02Nickelback's name comes from the change bassist Mike Kroeger handed customers while working at which chain?
Starbucks
Starbucks was where Mike Kroeger worked the till, and his habit of telling customers they had a nickel back in their change gave the Canadian band its name.
Q 03Fall Out Boy is named after a comic-book character from which long-running animated TV series?
The Simpsons
The Simpsons supplied the name, which the band's friends chose by vote from a short list. It stuck partly because two members were die-hard fans of the show.
Q 04Lynyrd Skynyrd's name is a mocking tribute to Leonard Skinner, who held which job at the members' high school?
Gym teacher
Gym teacher Leonard Skinner strictly enforced the school's rule against long hair on boys, so the Jacksonville band twisted his name into its own.
Q 05BTS stands for the Korean phrase Bangtan Sonyeondan, which translates literally as which three words?
Bulletproof Boy Scouts
Bulletproof Boy Scouts is the literal translation. In 2017 the group announced that its initials would also stand for Beyond the Scene as part of a new brand identity.
Q 06Which British rock band played its first concerts, a Scandinavian tour, billed as the New Yardbirds?
Led Zeppelin
Led Zeppelin had to drop the New Yardbirds billing after former Yardbirds bassist Chris Dreja sent a cease and desist letter, so the four chose a fresh name.
Q 07The Chicago rock band Veruca Salt is named after a spoiled rich girl in which Roald Dahl book?
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is where Veruca Salt appears as the girl who gets whatever she demands. Louise Post and Nina Gordon borrowed her name in 1992.
Q 08Which continent gives its name to the rock band, first called Force, that recorded "The Final Countdown"?
Europe
Europe began in 1979 as a band called Force and broke through at home in 1982 by winning the first televised Swedish Rock Championships.
Q 09Which sea creature completes the name of Darius Rucker's South Carolina rock band, Hootie & the ___?
Blowfish
Blowfish was the nickname of a puffy-cheeked college friend of the band. Hootie was a second friend, whose round glasses made him look like an owl.
Q 10Which word ends the names of both Scott Weiland's Stone Temple ___ and Tyler Joseph's Twenty One ___?
Pilots
Pilots ends both names. Tyler Joseph took his from Arthur Miller's play All My Sons, while Scott Weiland's band had earlier performed as Mighty Joe Young.
Q 11Which word completes the name of Red Hot Chili ___, the Los Angeles band formed by Anthony Kiedis and Flea?
Peppers
Peppers rounds off the name the band took after starting out as Tony Flow and the Miraculously Majestic Masters of Mayhem.
Q 12Which word completes the name of Guns N' ___, the Los Angeles hard rock band featuring the guitarist Slash?
Roses
Roses comes from Hollywood Rose, one of two earlier groups whose members merged to form the band. The other, L.A. Guns, supplied the first half of the name.
Q 13Which word completes the name of John Fogerty's California rock band, Creedence Clearwater ___?
Revival
Revival stood for the four members' renewed commitment to their band, while Clearwater came from a television commercial for a brewery.
Q 21Which founding member of Pink Floyd coined the band's name from the first names of two American bluesmen?
Syd Barrett
Syd Barrett took the names from Pink Anderson and Floyd Council, two players whose Piedmont blues records sat in his collection.
Q 22U2 played its first paying gig under which name, picked as one of the few technical terms the members knew?
Feedback
Feedback soon gave way to The Hype, the name the group was still using at the show where founding member Dik Evans ceremonially walked offstage.
Q 23The reggae band UB40 took its name from a British government form used to claim which payment?
Unemployment benefit
Q 14Which word completes the name of Panic! at the ___, the Las Vegas pop rock band fronted by Brendon Urie?
Disco
Disco completes a name modelled on a line in a song by the band Name Taken. In 2008 the group dropped its exclamation mark, then restored it the following year.
Q 15Which word completes the name of Tom Petty and the ___, the band formed after Mudcrutch broke up?
Heartbreakers
Heartbreakers was the name Tom Petty, Mike Campbell and Benmont Tench took in 1976, after their earlier band Mudcrutch failed to land a hit and disbanded.
Q 16Which word completes the name of Bob Marley and the ___, the Jamaican group first known as the Teenagers?
Wailers
Wailers was the name the group settled on after also trying the Wailing Rudeboys and the Wailing Wailers.
Q 17Which word completes the name of Electric Light ___, the Birmingham rock band led by Jeff Lynne?
Orchestra
Orchestra turns the name into a pun: it refers both to electric light and to light orchestral music, a style long featured on BBC radio.
Q 18Which word completes the name of Imagine ___, the Las Vegas pop rock band fronted by Dan Reynolds?
Dragons
Dragons is part of an anagram: the band's name rearranges a phrase known only to its members.
Q 19Which word completes the name of Siouxsie and the ___, the London band that debuted at a 1976 punk festival?
Banshees
Banshees was chosen only after Siouxsie Sioux and Steven Severin had offered to fill a vacant slot at the 100 Club Punk Festival with no band name or bandmates.
Q 20Which band did Brian Jones name on the spot after a track on a Muddy Waters LP?
The Rolling Stones
The Rolling Stones got their name when a journalist asked Brian Jones what the band was called and he spotted a Muddy Waters record lying on the floor.
Unemployment benefit claimants were issued an attendance card called the UB40. The band's first album, Signing Off, marked the end of the members' own claims.
Q 24Jethro Tull is named after an 18th-century English agriculturist who invented which farming device?
Seed drill
Seed drill inventor Jethro Tull's name was supplied by a history enthusiast at the band's booking agency. Ian Anderson assumed the agent had made it up.
Q 25The Doors took their name from the title of The Doors of Perception, a book by which English writer?
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley borrowed his title from a line by the poet William Blake, so the band's name traces back to the eighteenth century.
Q 26Duran Duran is named after the character Durand Durand in which science fiction film starring Jane Fonda?
Barbarella
Barbarella was shown on BBC television in October 1978, and John Taylor and Nick Rhodes named their new Birmingham band after its character the very next day.
Q 27Black Sabbath took its name from a 1963 Italian horror film starring which veteran actor?
Boris Karloff
Boris Karloff's film was playing at a cinema across the street from the band's rehearsal room, where Geezer Butler marvelled that people paid so much to be scared.
Q 28Radiohead, formerly On a Friday, took its new name from a song by which American new wave band?
Talking Heads
Talking Heads released the track Radio Head on their 1986 album True Stories, and the English band adopted it when EMI asked for a change of name.
Q 29The Four Seasons, Frankie Valli's group, took its name from which kind of venue after a failed audition there?
Bowling alley
A bowling alley in Union Township, New Jersey, rejected the quartet for its lounge in 1960, so the singers walked away with the venue's name instead.
Q 30Dave Grohl's band Foo Fighters is named after a Second World War term for which mysterious phenomena?
UFOs
UFOs, or unidentified flying objects, were known as foo fighters during the war. Dave Grohl chose the name hoping to release his first recordings anonymously.