60 Band Name Origins in 60 Minutes

Published: Nov. 22, 2017, 3:07 a.m.

b'As someone who churns out tens of thousands of words a week\\u2014everything from emails to blog posts to business documents to these radio scripts\\u2014I\\u2019ve developed a fascination with words and, for whatever reason, names\\u2026especially the origins of names\\u2026\\n\\nThe study of word origins is \\u201cetymology\\u201d\\u2026and the study of name origins is \\u201conomastics\\u201d\\u2026\\n\\nTake, for example the name Ignatius\\u2026this is an ancient name dating back to the Etruscans, the civilization before the romans\\u2026a lot of dudes were named \\u201cIgnatius\\u201d over the centuries\\u2026\\n\\nWhen Spanish came along, it morphed into Ignacio, which was often abbreviated to \\u201cNacho\\u201d\\u2026fast-forward to 1943\\u2026Ignacio Anaya lived in Piedras Negras, which is just over the border from Eagle Pass, Texas, home to a U.S. military base\\u2026\\n\\nOne night some American soldiers came to his restaurant looking for something to eat\\u2026with almost nothing in the kitchen, he wiped something up featuring deep-friend tortillas cut into triangles, covered in cheese and served pickled jalapeno peppers\\u2026the soldiers loved the improvised snack so much that they named it after their host: Ignacio \\u201cNacho\\u201d Anaya\\u2026\\n\\nBut there\\u2019s another part to the Ignatius story\\u2026.back over in Europe in Bavaria, Ignatius transformed into Ignatz\\u2026the short form for that was \\u201cNazi\\u201d\\u2026this is how \\u201cNazi\\u201d came to denote a backwards peasant from the Bavarian countryside\\u2026\\n\\nThis is the same part of Germany that gave rise to a political party called \\u201cnationalsocializmus\\u201d led by a guy called Adolph Hitler\\u2026.those who thought Hitler was a clown, abbreviated \\u201cnationalsocializmus\\u201d to \\u201cNazi\\u201d as a way of calling the party a bunch of boobs\\u2026it was a taunt, an insult\\u2026\\n\\nBut Hilter and his crew turned everything around and took the term \\u201cNazi\\u201d as their own and\\u2014well, things turned out badly for the planet\\u2026\\n\\nBut isn\\u2019t that kind of cool?...there\\u2019s a connection between something as diverse as German fascists and a plate of junk food that\\u2019s great for hangovers\\u2026\\n\\nWhat if we apply this sort of scholarly etymological and onomastical research to the names of musical groups?...let\\u2019s do that\\u2026hang on\\u2026a lot of data is about to come your way\\u2026\\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices'