Punk Name Generator

Punk stage names were invented to be the opposite of a rock star name. Where a 70s frontman wanted to sound like a god, a punk wanted to sound like a complaint: Johnny Rotten, Sid Vicious, Rat Scabies, Darby Crash. The formula has barely changed since 1976. Take a plain, working-class first name (Johnny, Sid, Dee Dee, Tommy) and bolt on a surname that is an insult, an illness, a building material or a bureaucratic misery. Poly Styrene and Tesco Vee added the trick of naming yourself after something cheap and mass-produced; Captain Sensible and Jello Biafra showed that a fake rank or a ridiculous pairing works just as well.

This list is built in all of those registers. You will find alliterative gutter names (Vinnie Vomit, Donna Detention), cheap-material aliases (Formica Fran, Polly Urethane), mock titles (Sergeant Rot, Duchess of Dole), one-word nicknames that work on a jacket or a setlist (Stitches, Pogo, Shiv), British dole-queue names, hardcore-flavoured bruisers and a handful of the real legends for reference.

The best punk name sounds like something a bouncer would shout. Keep it to two or three syllables per word, choose an image that is mundane rather than merely shocking, and make sure it still reads clearly when photocopied onto a flyer at three in the morning.