What was the Beach Boys' original band name?

In a cramped Hawthorne, California music room in 1961, five teenagers were busy perfecting their harmonies. Under Brian Wilson's obsessive musical direction, this group of brothers, a cousin, and a friend would soon revolutionize American pop music. But before they became The Beach Boys and changed music forever, they went by a different, much less catchy name. What did these future legends originally call themselves?

Click below to answer.

Or scroll past the quiz to reveal the answer!

Reveal answer and learn more:

▼

The answer is: The Pendletones

If you walked into the Wilson family's Hawthorne music room in 1961, you'd find five teenagers wearing matching wool shirts, arguing about harmonies. They called themselves The Pendletones – a name that probably sounded cooler in their heads, inspired by the Pendleton shirts that every wannabe surfer was wearing at the time.

The lineup was a family affair: three Wilson brothers (Brian, Dennis, and Carl), their cousin Mike Love, and their friend Al Jardine, who probably wondered what he'd gotten himself into. Dennis was the only one who actually surfed, but that didn't stop them from writing songs about catching waves between rehearsals in their wool sweaters that were absolutely not made for Southern California weather.

Their first single, "Surfin'," was about to hit local record stores when fate – or more specifically, a record label that didn't bother asking the band – intervened. The boys rushed to grab their first pressed record, probably fighting over who got to hold it first, only to discover they'd been renamed. The label read "The Beach Boys." No committee, no focus group, no asking the actual band members. Just a unilateral decision that would change pop music history.

The name change came from Candix Records, where Russ Regan suggested "The Beach Boys" had a better ring to it. He wasn't wrong – "The Pendletones" did sound more like a rejected doo-wop group or a knock-off acne medication. "The Beach Boys" captured that California magic perfectly, even if they'd spend the next 60 years explaining to journalists that only one of them surfed.

Brian Wilson's musical genius would soon transform them from a local surf band into revolutionary artists. Those intense harmony practices in the Wilson house laid the groundwork for masterpieces like "Pet Sounds" – quite a journey from five kids in itchy wool shirts singing about surfing.

Today, The Beach Boys are American icons, though Mike Love probably still has a lawsuit pending about not being consulted on the name change (a little inside baseball for Beach Boys fans there). Those Pendleton shirts that inspired their original name ended up in the back of closets, replaced by the striped shirts we know today. But somewhere out there, in a parallel universe, The Pendletones are still playing – and their wool shirts have never gone out of style.

Think about it: every time you hear "California Girls" or "Good Vibrations," you're listening to what could have been The Pendletones' Greatest Hits. Sometimes the best thing that can happen to a band is having absolutely no say in their own name.