Canadian digital music service CBC Music recently charted an (unscientific) survey of musical naming trends, which eventually became a massive infographic on the taxonomy of a band name, from the 50s till today.

Although, the real credit has to go to CBC bloggist and graphic designer Ben Didier, who did all the research and created the chart below (you can read his original piece here).

Some of the funnier pieces of info Didier found, was that there is a band in America, who call themselves JFKFC, you can check them out on Youtube. That 80s bands tended to repeat themselves, to repeat themselves. That bad spelling in a name, has made for some very successful bands throughout the years, such as INXS or Split Enz (which is missing, by the way). Also, the NSW township of Grong Grong (pop. 537) is named after the Aboriginal term “very bad camping ground”.

Another interesting point is that the animal kingdom seems to be an endless source for bands to create names from. Also, Dinosaurs are a good source of interesting band names, all except for T-Rex. Marc Bolan and co. have forever retired that as a band name. Too much glitter, top hats, velvet jackets and satin pants for modern bands to want to be associated with.

There are some glaring omissions, Wolfmother is missing and the giraffe section doesn’t include Giraffe? Giraffe!, but overall its fun to take a look at and you’ll be surprised at some of the names bands thought were ‘cool’, ‘hip’, or ‘rad’ at the time.

If you’re eyesight can’t cope with the tiny writing, you can click the infographic and it’ll open into a much larger image (in a new tab).