How Pink Floyd got its name – and what the band was called before Syd Barrett change

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The legendary progressive rock group Pink Floyd got its name from an unlikely source, and it marked a major improvement on their name before that.

The band, which originally featured Roger Waters, Richard Wright, Nick Mason, and Syd Barrett, was formed in 1965, though the four knew each other before that. Their encounters in the mid-1960s were crucial in forming what would become Pink Floyd as the four-piece toyed with name ideas and a progressive rock sound that would, just a decade later, define the genre. With the band securing recording studio time in December 1964 and performing a handful of shows shortly afterwards, they found that their pre-Pink Floyd name was not working. Barrett is apparently the member who decided on the group’s name change, with Pink Floyd selected because it combined the names of two blues musicians.

Mason, Wright, Waters and Barrett’s group was originally called The Tea Set. The name lasted just two years before the four opted to rebrand as Pink Floyd. Barrett is reportedly the man who not only came up with the name Pink Floyd, but also gave the other group members a good enough reason to change it. The group were set to appear on a bill with another group also called The Tea Set.

This prompted Barrett to change the name of the group, pulling the names of Pink Anderson and Floyd Council, blues musicians who heavily influenced the veteran songwriter. Barrett would be removed from the group shortly after they released their debut album. But during his brief and influential stint in the group, the band found what worked for their sound.

Drummer Nick Mason confirmed that during their early shows, to avoid song repetition they found they could extend their set with “lenghty solos”. David Gilmour, who would join the group after Barrett’s departure, took full advantage of this and made some of the band’s most recognisable music.

Barrett had, according to Atagong, tried to pass off the band’s renaming as an encounter with extraterrestrials. The Atagong feature reads: “Syd Barrett at first tried to explain that the name Pink Floyd had come to him in a vision or by a passing flying saucer while he was meditating on a leyline, but the truth is somewhat less exotic. In a Swedish interview from September 1967, Barrett explained, ‘The name Pink Floyd comes from two blues singers from Georgia, USA – Pink Anderson and Floyd Council.'”

Further detail on the naming of Pink Floyd can be found in a release of Days in the Life, with Peter Jenner quoted as saying Barrett was inspired by the liner notes of the two blues players. He said: “The name came from a sleeve note which one of them had read, which referred to Pink somebody or other, and Floyd somebody or other, two old blues guys, and they just thought that ‘The Pink Floyd’ was a nice combination, and they called it the Pink Floyd Sound.”