Good folk band names borrow from old songs, birds, villages and the families who sang them. This folk band name generator makes band names, singer names and album titles in the style of English trad, folk-rock, Appalachian ballads and nu-folk.
Eight good folk band names
All eight came from the generator, bands, singers and albums:
- The Grey Magpies: a bird with a colour, the most folk-sounding band name there is.
- The Wychwood Broadside: a forest and a broadside, the cheap song-sheets ballads were once sold on.
- Linen & Rope: two plain, handmade things, the nu-folk way.
- The Drummond Family: a family band, like the Watersons or the Copper Family.
- Peggy Kinsella: a singer's name with an Irish surname and a trad feel.
- Jasper Trevithick: a Cornish surname for a singer-songwriter.
- A Lammas Garland: a garland was a little book of ballads, and Lammas is the August harvest festival.
- Songs from the Shepherd's Hut: a place you can picture someone singing.
How folk music names itself
Folk names come from the songs. Steeleye Span took their name from a character in the traditional song "Horkstow Grange", and Fairport Convention from Fairport, the house in Muswell Hill where they rehearsed. Some of the best-loved English acts are simply families: the Watersons from Hull and the Copper Family of Rottingdean in Sussex.
- Bands take birds, plants, places and families: The Winter Starlings, Whitethorn, The Hennessy Brothers. Ceilidh bands add the dance: The Medlock Ceilidh Band.
- Singers usually use their own names, and the surnames here come from England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and Cornwall. Choose a gender for names like Clara Trevithick or Fergus Fairley.
- Albums borrow from old song collections: a garland, a farewell, a song from somewhere. The Carter's Farewell, Under the Rowan Tree.
Across the Atlantic, the old ballads survived in the Appalachian mountains, where the English collector Cecil Sharp went looking for them during the First World War. Nu-folk, the 2000s revival around London, kept the handmade feel but swapped the ballads for short, simple names.
Using a folk band name
- Make it easy to say in a folk club. A name gets introduced from the floor, so it should be clear the first time.
- Use a place you know. A local wood, river or hill gives a band roots, and people from there will come to the gig.
- Check the name isn't a song title already. Traditional songs are everywhere in folk, so search the name alongside "folk" before you commit.
For the American side of the family, try the Bluegrass Band and Country Singer name generators. For a general band name, there's the Band Name Generator.
For more genres, see all the music genre name generators.