Arctic Monkeys fans are finally discovering the origins of the band’s name – despite one member thinking the moniker is “ridiculous.”
Formed in Sheffield in 2002, the four-piece group has released seven studio albums to date, most recently The Car in 2022.
They hold the record for the best-selling debut album in the UK in one week by a group, with a staggering 363,735 copies of Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not flying off shelves within seven days of its 2006 release date.
Despite their enduring popularity, however, many fans are unaware of how the band, fronted by Alex Turner, got its name. A Reddit user shared an infographic explaining the origins of various band names.
The fan wrote of Arctic Monkeys: “Named at the request of guitarist Jamie Cook, who had always just wanted to be in a band called the ‘Arctic Monkeys’ and refused to reveal where he got the idea.”
Another fan posted: “I’ve always been curious about the band name ‘Arctic Monkeys’. So, when I searched the internet, I found that Jamie came up with the name, and the other band members claimed to be unaware of its meaning.”
The poster added that some fans had thought the name might be a play on the term “Northern monkey,” used unflatteringly to describe people from northern England.
However, they went on to say: “In the comments of a video where Alex and Matt [Helders] were giving a slang lesson, someone explained that the term ‘Arctic Monkey’ is not commonly used but can be slang for a situation or person that feels out of place.
“For example, phrases like ‘I fit in with that lot about as well as an Arctic Monkey’ or ‘I felt like an Arctic Monkey at that party.’ Other people seemed to agree and find this explanation reasonable, suggesting that the band name might have been derived from this slang.”
However, most fans agreed the name probably didn’t hold any significant meaning and really was the brainchild of guitarist Cook. One fan remarked: “Not a deep meaning really, they just came up with it, Alex Turner has said on multiple occasions he thinks it’s a stupid name.”
“It’s just a continuation of a tradition of combining words that have opposite meanings or don’t really go together,” another fan pointed out. “Led Zeppelin, Happy Mondays, Stone Roses; there are probably a million others too.
“The idea being that there are no monkeys in the Arctic, because there’s no trees for them to swing in.”
Turner, 39, has expressed his dislike for the band’s name in several interviews. In one, he said: “It’s so bad that the tribute bands don’t sound worse.”
Speaking to Uncut, the lead singer even suggested the band’s fifth studio album – AM – would have been self-titled if it weren’t for the group’s ‘ridiculous’ name.
“It sort of feels right where we should be,” Turner remarked after the 2013 release. “It’s a new sound that we haven’t made before, so it kind of made sense to self-title it. Which I would have done, if we didn’t have such a ridiculous name.”
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