Angry Anderson ProfileStage names come from different sources and reasons. Some because they were extensions of childhood names, or part of creating a new persona, or having an element to give them super-strength or vulnerability.
We look back at 20 moments when a stage name came into being.
Angry Anderson
At The Station Hotel in Prahran in Melbourne, Gary Stephen Anderson noticed acquaintance Mango Mick being bullied. Despite being small-made 5’1” (1.54 metres), and the brawlers being large, Anderson waded in fearlessly, fists flying.
“Hey! What about the ant, the angry ant!” Mango Mick yelled.
The handle Angry Ant was picked up by his circle, and later shortened to Angry.
Anderson attributed his rage to his father, “a deeply troubled man... I've dealt with my rage, my pain... I was a very angry boy... When he was around he was a very explosive person."
Bad Bunny
In 2016, when 22-year old Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio was looking for a hook on which to hang his climb from bagging groceries at the local supermarket to Latin music’s biggest superstar, he remembered a childhood photo.
"When I was a little boy in school, I had to dress up as a bunny, and there's a picture of me with an annoyed face,” the Puerto Rican born rapper told ET. “When I saw it, I thought I should name myself Bad Bunny.
"It's a name I knew would market well. A bunny is something so common that I thought to myself, every time someone sees one, they'll remember my music."
His fans call themselves "Los Conejos," or "The Rabbits." 90,000 of them were at his two shows in Sydney this year, which grossed $20.4 million.
Alison Wonderland
In 2009, Alex Scholler was starting to play underground DJ parties around Sydney uncredited, and widening her following.
She was hanging out at her best friend and manager Garth Crane’s pad in Neutral Bay when a club promoter rang. He was printing the next club poster and wanted a name, giving them five minutes to come up with something.
Crane suggested Alison Wonderland, based on English writer Lewis Carroll’s 1865 classic book Alice’s Adventure In Wonderland, said to be based on a LSD trip.
Crane had an idea about marketing. He did a degree in finance and marketing and worked in the finance industry. He quit to book a venue in Kings Cross and later set up music and events company Falcona and FRNDS Management
Alexandra’s response to the name: “That’s so stupid I hate it! It’s so lame, so girlie.” The idea was to change it in two weeks. She never did.
Megan Thee Stallion
It started at a football game in her hometown San Antonio in Texas for 15-year old Megan Jovon Ruth Pete. An older player told her, “Wow, mama, you’re a stallion.”
Megan went home and asked her uncle what it meant.
It was a hip-flyer in the US southern states for women who were tall (she 5’10” or 1.78 metres) and voluptuous. “It means you’re tall and fine.”
To which she replied, “Oh yes, I’m that!”
Chappell Roan
Growing up in a stifling conservative Christian Missouri family, Kayleigh Rose Amstutz decided that as a singer, she would totally recreate herself to "honour that [10-year-old] version of myself that I was never allowed to be."
At 17 she signed her first record deal, with Atlantic, after uploading her original song Die Young. A year later came the making of the “Chappell Roan” persona.
She didn’t look far. Her grandfather Dennis K. Chappell always encouraged her to pursue her dreams. “He was very funny and very smart. I don’t think he ever questioned my ability.”
He was a successful businessman, opening an insurance company PJC Insurance and owned a golf and country club in Bolivar, Missouri.
He’d tell her, “There are always options. It’s not a scarcity of opportunity.” Also, “You don’t need a Plan B, just do it.” These shaped her career.
In 2016, he became ill with brain cancer. She told him, “I’m going to be a Chappell for you.” Roan came from his favourite song, The Strawberry Roan, a country and western ditty by Marty Robbins about a pinkish-red horse.
The release of her first record was continually being delayed. Finally she rang her mother to tell her, “It’s locked in for September 11”. There was a brief silence. “September 11 is the first death anniversary of your grandfather.”
“It was meant to be,” said Chappell, who gets furious if fans call her Kayleigh.
Yungblud
Untreated for attention deficit hyperactive disorder, feeling misunderstood as a child and teenager, iced from a school for taking up a friend’s dare to moon the Maths teacher, suffering insomnia, regarded himself as “pan-sexual”, and surviving two attempts on his own life.
It was understandable that Dominic Richard Harrison would always feel his birth name was too “polite” for what he had to say in his music.
He used the Harrison name when he appeared as an actor on the Emmerdale and The Lodge TV series.
When he signed to his management company at age 20, he was the youngest on the roster. Everyone called him “young blood”. The word was changed slightly to give it more impact, and used for the first time on debut single King Charles.
Sid Vicious
There are two trains of thought about Sid Vicious, the bass player with the Sex Pistols who was born Simon John Ritchie.
One was that he deserved his status as a punk legend. After all, he couldn’t play bass, he invented the punk pogo (if only to knock over people in the audience he didn’t like), he was aggressive and handy with a knife, was addicted to ‘70s punk favourite drug heroin, and towards the end was shooting up speed 14 times a day.
He was supposed to have killed his girlfriend Nancy Spungen and, dying at 21 in 1979, epitomised the “live fast and leave a good looking corpse” philosophy loved by punks.
But his best friend John Lydon insists he was not vicious. “He was gentle and misunderstood. He couldn’t fight his way out of a bag of crisps.
“I regret the day I recommended him for the Pistols (January 14, 1978). That’s the day he lost his sense of humour. After that he became the star for asshole fake idiots. Every parasite latched on to him.”
It was Lydon (who was nicknamed Johnny Rotten because he never brushed his teeth) who gave Ritchie his stage name.
They were sharing a squat. Lydon had a hamster called Sid, after Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd. One day the fur ball bit Ritchie. “Sid really is vicious!” Rotten said. The name glued on.
In 1977 when The Pistols and Queen were recording in adjacent rooms at Wessex Sound Studios in London, a drunk Vicious wandered into Queen’s control room.
“Oi Freddie,” he mocked. “Have you succeeded in bringing ballet to the masses yet?”
Mercury responded: “Oh yes Simon Ferocious. We’re trying our best, dear.” He then grabbed the Pistol’s lapels and threw him out of the room.
Shaboozey
At high school, Collins Obinna Chibueze got his stage name long before the country star started to make music as Shaboozey.
“My [football] coach had just seen my last name and he was like, 'Shaboozey,' and wrote it on a helmet exactly how it's spelled as my artist name.
“I just got called that throughout school, throughout my years in high school and Woodbridge (Virginia] and everyone around town knew me as that. And I just thought it was cool to just play at my football coaches, like, 'Look at me’.”
Queen Latifah
As a child, the unroyal Dana Elaine Owens from Newark, New Jersey, was continually told by her mother Rita Owens, “Every woman is a queen.”
The second part came when the eight year old was flicking through The Muslim Book Of Names lent to her by a Muslim cousin, and came across ‘Latifah’. It meant delicate, sensitive, kind and nice.
“I was a Pisces and I was a very nice person as a kid. I was big for my age but I was also a bit shy, so the name reflected who I was.”
Dana told CNC that when she declared to her family her new name, her mother huffed, “Queen? I ain't calling you Queen!”
Chet Faker
Singer songwriter Nick Murphy was about 19 or 20 when he came up with Chet Faker. It was more than just a tongue-in-cheek tribute to brilliant American jazz trumpeter Chet Baker whom he was listening a lot to at the time.
It was more of a philosophical decision. “Chet was not a great singer, it sounded like his voice could crack at any point. There was no big vocal range or anything like that.
“But all of that limitation and vulnerability made it more potent. Because I thought my voice was weird, so I thought if I’m not that good, that could be a positive for me.”
Murphy told Spin he had two signatures for autograph hunters – the stage name which he has retired, and his own.
Dropping the stage name was a move to “set me free”, but he was surprised by how aggressive some fans were that he had “killed” Chet Faker.
Slowthai
Growing up in Northampton, England in a council estate and brought up by a teenage single mother, Tyrone Kaymone Frampton had a slight speech impediment which made him mumble, slur his words, and speak in a laid back slow delivery.
His classmates called him Slow Ty. So at the start of making a series of remarkable albums (not to mention holding a severed head of Prime Minister Boris Johnson onstage at the 2019 Mercury Prize awards), it made sense.
Jack River
Holly Isabella Rankin came up with Jack River as a 16 year old playing a childhood game with her friends calling themselves after male pirates when they went into town.
Names adopted included John Scarlet and Simon Woodpecker. Jack River was a “half space half Wild West” alter-ego which gave her the freedom to be who she wanted to be, and made her feel invincible.
It also allowed her to process her grief after losing a sister Shannon in a tragic spa accident.
Travis Scott
Growing up in a middle class neighbourhood in Houston, Texas, Jacques Bermon Webster II’s mum worked at Apple and his father a soul singer who ran a successful business.
His grandfather was a jazz composer who did his masters in jazz composition.
There were musical clashes with his father. When he’d be creating beats with his friends in his bedroom, Pa Webster would barge in and pull the power, leading to fisticuffs.
When it came to a stage name, the first choice was his uncle Travis. “He was the coolest, played golf, really smart and made great business decisions.”
The second part came from his hero, rapper Kid Cudi, whose real moniker was Scott Mescudi.
He told The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, “My uncle’s friends called him Scott too, so it just kinda worked out like that – my two superheroes.”
The Webster name carries on with his two children with Kylie Jenner, daughter Stormi and son Aire.
Doja Cat
When Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini began rapping, she "was heavily addicted to weed and weed culture."
Doja is street slang for a particularly strong strain of weed, and she thought, “That sounds like a girl’s name.”
The second part was her love for cats. When Doja Cat recorded her first album, Amala, she was “super high all the time.” She no longer smokes weed.
Lizzo
Growing up in Houston, Texas, Melissa Viviane Jefferson took her stage name from her teen nickname.
She explained to James Corden on The Late Late Show in June 2022. "We did a thing, in Houston, you chop the second half of your name and put an O. I was 'Lisso' with two s's, then everyone said it with a little swang to it so I changed the s's to z's and the rest is history."
Petit Biscuit
When French Moroccan Mehdi Benjelloun started posting on SoundCloud, he wanted a moniker that was “short, sassy but with a sense of innocence.”
Flash back to his days as a toddler when his grandmother would make him French pastries and stroke his head saying, in translation, “my little biscuit.”
The Kid LAROI
When Charlton Kenneth Jeffrey Howard took on his stage dub, it was inevitable it would be heavily inspired by the First Nation side of his mother Sloane Howard’s family.
His great-great-grandfather of the Kamilaroi people was one of the Stolen Generation, and sent to live with a white family. They explained away his darker skin to being Spanish. He was told the truth when he was 18.
It instilled in the family a total pride in being First Australian. His great-grandmother continually told him, “Keep the culture going, whether you do music or sports or whatever else you do.”
He grew up in Redfern in inner city Sydney, which has a sizable indigenous population, and increased his pride in being a First Australian.
At 14, as he started to rap, Sloane Howard, who was also managing him, used Charlton Laroi (referencing the Kamilaroi people) in his early promo material.
But there was also a nod to the French strain on his father’s side. Nick Howard was briefly a pop singer, signing with executive Simon Cowell, but became a producer and engineer for Bardot and Delta Goodrem.
Charlton, who spoke French, was aware that Laroi means king in that language. He became The Kid LAROI when he signed his first record deal.
Slash
Most people on this list consciously picked their stage monikers, for whatever reason.
In Slash’s case, he was using it onstage for years before he became aware of what it meant! He assumed, like most of Guns N’ Roses’ fans, it might have had something to do with knives.
Saul Hudson’s African-American mother Ola, a celebrated fashion and costume designer, was studying in London when she fell for artist Anthony Hudson. He created album covers for Neil Young and Joni Mitchell.
Their brief marriage resulted in Saul and brother Albion or “Ash”. When it crumbled, she returned to Hollywood with the boys. She dated David Bowie for a time. He would babysit them.
Ola created Bowie’s Thin White Duke look, and also did image work for John Lennon, Ringo Starr, Diana Ross, Janet Jackson, and The Pointer Sisters before dying in June 2009 from lung cancer.
Both boys grew up in Hollywood’s glamour and creativity. “Ash” Hudson became a designer who founded graffiti-inspired surf and skate firm ConArt.
Saul’s best friend from childhood, Matthew, was the son of actor Seymour Cassel. The family started to call him Slash, and it stuck.
Years later after the Gunners became one of the biggest bands in the world, Slash ran into Cassel in Europe. They met for lunch, and the musician asked about the name.
“Because you were always running here and there, never had time to stop and chat. You were too busy hustling. You were always in a slash.”
Slash said everyone, including his parents, called him by that name. The two exceptions were his grandmother and “The police, because it’s on my driver’s licence.”
