Foreign-language band names that happen to be barbarisms and/or solecisms

Blut aus Nord

Depeche Mode

La Roux

Non-anglophone bands that butcher the English language are fair game too.

Fishmans

Gorky's Zygotic Mynci

Scritti Politti

Heh, I thought ‘mynci’ really was Welsh for ‘monkey’.

Matching Mole (Machine Molle)

De La Soul

Metallica?

although Metallica is correct in Italian (don't know what their intention was)

Doesn't really count but Tom Warrior always pronounced it as 'Seltic Frost'.

depeche mode are named after an actual french magazine though? albeit without the accents.

Ah, I did not know that. It does work as a trendy magazine title, yes, although the usual form is 'Dépêche de…' ('Dispatch from…') followed by a place name (e.g. 'Dépêche du Midi').

Voivod

Voïvod too, while we're at it.

xp yeah i think "mode" in that case is functioning like an appositive, not unlike "la vie mode d'emploi" :)

Hüsker Dü
Hurriganes

Heh, it might be even more of a true appositive than the latter, which implies an invisible comma (or a colon) after 'la vie'. Great band (name) either way.

xp

Along the same lines as Gorky's Zygotic Mynci: The Ruins of Beverast (an Anglicization of Bifröst).

Nitzer Ebb, maybe?

T'Pau is actually a very rude insult in Vulcan

“We started off life as La Comédie De La Mort (from the book by Théophile Gautier) but soon had enough of that French Romanticism bollocks and made up the name Nitzer Ebb by cutting up words and letters and pulling them randomly from a hat, á la Bowie, to try to get something deliberately Germanic without actually using German words.”

The Häagen-Dazs of EBM.

What's the correct way to say "blood of the north" in German?

Mercyful Fate

Are the umlauts the only issue with "Hüsker Dü"?

What's the correct way to say "blood of the north" in German?

From The Metal Archives:

The name Blut aus Nord is German and literally translates to "Blood from North", but it is grammatically awkward for the intended meaning. A better version would be "Blut aus dem Norden". It is possible that the band actually intended for it to mean "Blood of the North" ("Sang du Nord" in French, "Blut des Nordens" in German).

I didn't know "Voivod" was supposed to mean anything in any language tbh - what is it meant to be?

Dänische Kool-Aid

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voivode

Usually spelled 'voievod' or 'voevod' in Romanian. Tbf the 'voivod' variant exists as well but it's quite rare.

xp

I like Wiki's suggestion that it's nautical grammar.

The name "Blut aus Nord" translates from German as "Blood from the North", though the non-standard grammar suggests nautical jargon (a more standard phrasing would be "Blut aus (dem) Norden" or "Blut von Nord(en)," though cardinal directions are seldom used in spoken German to begin with).

You know, like when you're on a ship and there's blood coming from the north.

Wow, thanks.xp

Vindsval was 15 when he came up with the name, heh.

De La Soul

― Portsmouth Bubblejet, mardi 4 août 2020 18:08 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Sounds right to me. Du rock, du jazz, de la pop, de la soul.

Not to be confused with 'du soûl'. :)

Die Kreuzen is mangled German for The Crosses. It should be Die Kreuze.

She Past Away

Flying Klassenfeind

Los Lobotomys

then there's the band Solecism

Das Damen

(thread title makes my brain go – “Solécisme ou Barbarie”)

Bon Iver
(did he like the name Bon Hiver, but worry that ppl would pronounce it “Bonn HIVE-r”?)