By: Hannah Landers

What’s in a name? More than you’d think, which we found when we tapped some Boston bands whose monikers strike a unique chord.

Wizard Cult

Photo Credit: Wizard Cult

This metal band—composed of a “cult of wizards visiting this Earth from another version of reality”—conjured up its name after writing some songs about a prominent Dungeons & Dragons character.

The Bored of Health

Photo Credit: Marc Wolfson Pinansky

Vocalist/guitarist Marc Wolfson Pinansky didn’t lose sleep coming up with this sextet’s name. It came to him in a dream, he says, blending the group’s “love of wordplay, humor, life and often blatant disregard for our physical well-being.”

Bitch Trifecta

Photo Credit: Jane Park

Vocalist/guitarist Jane Park turned one “clever but angry” dude’s affront into a name for her MySpace page and, later, her folk-rock quintet.

Sexy Coyote

Photo Credit: Kamen Ross

Boasting a sound vocalist Kamen Ross says is like “a gang of stray cats [playing] mariachi music on electric guitars,” this band was inspired by Southwestern coyote myths about the arrogant animal falling victim to his own ego.

Hobo Chili

Photo Credit: Daniel Levy

You are what you eat, and this R&B-tinged punk band is “greater than the sum of its parts,” says vocalist Steve Brocone, “mixing the sounds of the music we love” to create a sonic stew.

Sneeze

Photo Credit: Sneeze

Before this grunge band was Sneeze, it was Sneezer, an inside joke that began by laughing at a guy with a cold, guitarist/vocalist Derek Desharnais explains, but became a way to “reference individuals we thought were strange.”

Adam Glasseye and Insect Fable

Photo Credit: Adam Glasseye

Formed from founders of the now-defunct Reverend Glasseye, this orchestral rock group found inspiration in “a certain ocular surgery that came with repercussions,” Adam says, and from “To-Day, This Insect” by Welsh poet Dylan Thomas.

Mr. Gavin’s Meat Farm

Photo Credit: Kate Billinski

Gavin Wallace-Ailsworth’s fascination with raw meat—the duality between a “strangely funny” appearance and its representation of death—provided the inspiration for this folky punk band’s name.

The Beachcombovers

Photo Credit: Judy West

Tommy White, lead guitarist of this surf-punk pand, gave the infamously terrible hairstyle a coastal makeover after reading a letter in the newspaper about a grandfather’s “stylish combover,” he says.