Behind the Name: Dierks Bentley

While Dierks Bentley may sound like a stage name to some, the moniker actually holds deep familial ties to the country singer. Bentley, who has amassed 22 No. 1 country songs throughout his career, admits that he’s often asked about his name.

“People ask me that, they go, ‘Is Dierks a stage name?’” Bentley tells American Songwriter. “I’m like, ‘Dude, if I was picking a stage name it would not have been Dierks. It would have been Buck or something cool. Doug Bentley. It wouldn’t have been Dierks.’ Dierks works, so it all worked out.”

Fittingly, his alter ego in the ’90s-inspired country band Hot Country Knights is “Doug” so that worked out, too. Below, Bentley shares the origin of his name.

Meaning Behind the Name

Dierks Bentley is actually part of the country singer’s real name. Born Frederick Dierks Bentley, the Arizona native says he’s always been called Dierks. In fact, he and his siblings all went by their middle names.

“My sister’s Catherine Vanessa Bentley,” he says. “She’s always gone by Vanessa and I was Frederick Dierks Bentley. I’ve always gone by Dierks. It’s a last name on my mom’s side of the family. All the Dierks people come from Arkansas, and I guess they were involved in lumber. There’s a lumber company called Dierks and there’s a town called Dierks too in Arkansas, just outside of Nashville, Arkansas.”

“My Last Name”

While in his first writing session with Harley Allen (The Grascals’ “Me and John and Paul,” Alan Jackson’s “Everything I Love,” George Jones’ “The Man He Was”), Bentley recalls the legendary songwriter asking about his name. The conversation inspired Bentley’s song “My Last Name,” the second single from his 2003 self-titled debut album.

“It’s so different now than it was back then and it makes me sound old saying it, but there are these guys that you want to write with that were the best but also really intimidating,” Bentley says, “and Harley Allen was the most intimidating of all of them. I got a chance to work with Harley Allen. I brought in my two best ideas and I got my guitar out and I played him the first idea. He just looked [at me] smoking a cigarette. He’s like, ‘Nah,’ and looked away and smoked his cigarette.

“I was like, ‘I’ll pull my second-best idea.’ He takes a drag off the cigarette. ‘Nah, I don’t like that either.’ Harsh and hardcore. You know, it’s one of the greatest songwriters of all time. He looks over at me and he goes, ‘What kind of fucking name is Dierks?’”

Bentley laughs, remembering how “brutally honest” Allen was. He then explained to the songwriter that it was the last name on his mom’s side, which is how it became his first name. “Well, there’s your fucking song,” Allen told him.

“Even now, it reminds me how extremely uncomfortable and scared and nervous … I’ve never written with somebody that was so blunt,” Bentley says. “And also, who literally I felt had a direct line to the big man or big woman upstairs – whoever is up there – because the words came out of him. The way he’d twist a story. I just love that song. Anyway, that’s, where that song came from. My name was the last name on my mom’s side of the family.”

Photo by Jim Wright / Greenroom PR