4 Bands Named After Historical Figures

Finding a band name is not always the easiest feat. Throughout music history, bands have been inspired by pop culture, literature and film, food, their hometown cities and states, and even some inanimate objects when choosing their moniker.

Other bands pulled from personal connections, including Lynyrd Skynyrd naming themselves after their high school teacher Leonard Skinner, or the early form of musical education, eurhythmics developed by the Swiss composer and educator Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, that gave Dave Stewart and Annie Lennox their name Eurythmics.

[RELATED: 5 Bands Forced to Change Their Names After Releasing Music]

Pink Floyd even took their name from the Piedmont blues artists Pink Anderson and Floyd Council, while The Yardbirds pulled their label from the nickname of American jazz saxophonist Charlie “Yardbird” Parker and the rail yard hobos of Jack Kerouac’s 1957 novel On the Road.

Names come from all places and sometimes search further back in time. Here’s a look at four bands who were inspired to name themselves after some key figures in history.

1. Crazy Horse

Formed in 1969, Crazy Horse now consists of Neil Young, E Street Band guitarist Nils Lofgren, bassist Billy Talbot, and drummer Ralph Molina, who were all with the band at varying times around its inception. Along with a number of live projects, Crazy Horse has released more than a dozen albums with Young, from Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere in 1969 to World Record in 2022.

[RELATED: The Meaning Behind Neil Young’s 1989 Hit “Rockin’ in the Free World”]
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Crazy Horse, or Tasunke Witco (1842-1877) was a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe of Rapid City, South Dakota. When his native land and culture were under attack, Crazy Horse fought for it and ultimately lost his life on September 5, 1877, in Fort Robinson, Nebraska.

2. Jethro Tull

In February 1968, the band had multiple band name switches that would keep changing every couple of days. “We had many different names which usually changed every week since we were so bad that we had to pretend to be some new band in order to get re-booked in the clubs where we aspired to find fame and fortune,” according to Ian Anderson, frontman of Jethro Tull.

“Our agent, who had studied history at college, came up with the name Jethro Tull. That was the band name during the week in which London’s famous Marquee Club offered us the Thursday night residency. So it stuck. Is it too late to change? I thought so.”
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Jethro Tull (1674-1741) was an English agriculturist, agronomist, writer, and inventor of the seed drill, who helped structure modern agriculture within the U.K.

3. Tesla

Formed in the early 1980s, Tesla didn’t fit the hair metal or other hard rock. Instead, the band were the bluesier and more soulful rock and roll children of groups like Aerosmith, The Allman Brothers Band Lynyrd Skynyrd, and Grand Funk Railroad. 

“The ground started shaking in Sacramento, CA, in 1984; gold country that would soon be producing some platinum,” reads a descriptor by the band. “They started out as City Kidd, until a suggested name change to Tesla, honoring the eccentric inventor Nikola Tesla who pioneered all things electrical.”
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Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) was a Serbian-American engineer and physicist who had nearly 300 patents worldwide for his inventions. Along with inventing the first alternating current (AC) motor along with AC generation and transmission technology and his numerous other inventions, he is most well known for crafting the Tesla coil. Probably Tesla’s most famous invention and certainly one of his most spectacular, was the Tesla coil which could transmit electricity wirelessly.

4. Franz Ferdinand

The assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, was the leading factor in the beginning of World War I. After seeing a horse named Archduke Ferdinand win the Northumberland Plate in 2001, the band started talking about the early 20th Century Archduke of the same name. They liked the alliteration of his name and decided to call themselves Franz Ferdinand.

The Scottish rockers released their self-titled debut in 2004 and their fifth album, Always Ascending, in 2018
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Archduke Franz Ferdinand (1863-1914) was the eldest son of Archduke Karl Ludwig of Austria and the younger brother of Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria and was set to inherit the throne of Austria-Hungary. Ferdinand ultimately renounced the throne but was appointed inspector general of the Austro-Hungarian armed forces. Shortly after 19-year-old revolutionist Gavrilo Princip assassinated Ferdinand and his wife, Austria-Hungary declared war against Serbia.

(Joey Martinez / Courtesy of Warner Records)