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How did you choose your "radio" last name?

KOOL Listener Lauren

KOOL Listener Lauren

Many people in radio use fake last names, to make their name catchy or what-not.

It seems like quite a process to find one you'd like, and a big decision if you're looking to stick with it for your entire career.

Just wondering how some of your struggles and searches for a "radio" last name have been. How did you choose it and why?
 
More than once, I was given the air name of the guy I replaced. Then the guy who eventually replaced me got the same air name.
 
I used Jay Clark for an air name. My real last name is too hard to pronounce. Things hadn't worked out but I was supposed to be an on-air DJ intern at that station when they were a hip-hop station and I was gonna use the name Jay Brown. Jay Brown sounds like an African American name to me so I figured it would hide that fact that I was a White DJ on a hip-hop station. So basically after they flipped from Hip-Hop to news-talk Jay Brown became Jay Clark, as it seems to be a very White-bred name.
 
KOOL Listener Lauren said:
Many people in radio use fake last names, to make their name catchy or what-not.

It seems like quite a process to find one you'd like, and a big decision if you're looking to stick with it for your entire career.

Just wondering how some of your struggles and searches for a "radio" last name have been. How did you choose it and why?
Click to expand...

In my first experience, I found a guy who was an absolute prick and pain in the a**, and there was another guy who was pushed around since he was so meek and mild. I took one name from both, to remind me to never become the egotistical a**hole of the one, or the doormat of the other.

I used that name, or a derivative for 10 or so years.

Like a lot of people, I tend to go by my real name, off the air, and with friends, so I added the first initial of my real name to mask those times that I encountered folks who know me, but really didn't.

it worked out for me!
 
We named our all-night guy who was afraid to talk much on the air, "Mike Fright". Currently, three of our five on-air people use their real names
 
I mostly used my real name. I began in radio in 1979/

However, I used the variation of "Jonathan Alan" from 1996 to 2001 on an AM station. It started as
a one-day-a-week shift as a board-op, and I only expected to be there for a few months. I figured if I worked full time at a different station, I'd use my real name there. The "Jonathan Alan" job ended up as a full-time gig and lasted 5 years.

Now I'm only on the Internet station, and use "radioboyalan" because, in real life, a lot of people call me that.
 
from "The Big Book of Anglo-Saxon Surnames Which Do Not Have a Sexual or Scatalogical Double Meaning".
(the 1954 First Edition was a classic. It sat on the desk of every Station Manager next to Websters
Dictionary and Roget's Thesarus)
 
...I currently use the actual ancestral root of my legal surname (it got contracted and respelled on its way to South Milwaukee). In my teenage years in college radio, I used the surname Quatro, as in glam rock legend Suzi Quatro and her sister Patti Quatro (then lead guitarist for the pioneering all-female rock band Fanny); I thought it sounded way tuff. Then there's the story of the second guy who had to use the name Steve York on the overnight shift at WCFL Chicago in 1971; the "original" Steve York had been hired for that shift but thought program director Robert E. Lee was such an @$$ that he quit after only a few shifts, and Lee hired the second guy but didn't want to let the newly-produced jingles go to waste ;-) ...
 
trusty said:
...and there's the old story about a guy applying for a shift at WLS that wanted to use the name Mike Rafone...
:D
Click to expand...
...a variation on Mike Rophone, the pseudonym seen so frequently on the liners of those old-time radio LPs issued by the Radiola label in the '70s...
 
I started in 1980 and used my real name in a variety of formats, including news, for my entire 19-year career. It was easy to say and tough for people to spell correctly, so I even stayed listed in the phone book. The only exception was in the mid 1990s when I got a fill-in gig at a major market station up the road from the medium market where I was working full-time. I didn't change it because of any fear of cross-market confusion, rather the big station had an established personality with an on-air last name similar to my real last name. I used my grandmother's maiden last name as my own.
I was always a little bugged by "formula" last names; they always sounded too phony to me and broke the one-to-one illusion. For a long time, PDs would tell their jocks to use a derivation of their middle name as their last name and we ended up with a zillion guys on the air named Roberts, Michaels, Williams, etc. I had no interest in being another "Williams."
 
Here's how I got my two radio names. I was named after a friend of my father who was murdered in college. His name was Kent Scout. That was the name I was supposed to use on the radio for my first overnight. The nighttime jock incorrectly introduced me as, "Kent Scott." The PD was there for the first hour to train me, and he said, "I guess you got a new name, Scout!" After that, it just stuck!

I also used "Kent Clark," and I got that one much the same way. I had not been on the radio for quite some time. I got a chance to play around at a college station near Kansas City, and someone at my real job during the day used to always call me "Clark" purely by accident. So, the PD, who, last I heard, was working at WHB in KC, suggested I just go with "Kent Clark" for my radio name.

So, I've generally used "Kent Scott" at news/talk, AC, and classic hits stations and "Kent Clark" at rock and top-40 stations!

By the way, I also named two weekend jocks at other stations I've worked at. One of them went by the name "Kathy Rose" after she couldn't think of a name to use herself. Her first name was Kathy, and I suggested she use "Rose" for her last name because "Cathy Rose" was a girl I had a crush on in junior high! I also named a friend of mine "Morgan Rocket" after a former college classmate. When she got married, her name went from Bowles to Rocket, and I just thought it sounded cool. My co-worker was told she needed a male-sounding name on our top-40 station, and she was thinking about Taylor. However, I had another friend, who's now on WIHT 99.5, who used "Taylor Shay" on the radio. So, I suggested she use something a little more distinctive!
 
Anyone have a name where the first letter of the last name sounded the same as the last letter of the first name? (ex: Jane Neuman, Doug Gleason, Eddie Edwards, etc.)
 
trusty said:
Anyone have a name where the first letter of the last name sounded the same as the last letter of the first name? (ex: Jane Neuman, Doug Gleason, Eddie Edwards, etc.)
Click to expand...


...Mike Hunt?

...sorry, very juvenile of me.
 


...Mike Hunt?

...sorry, very juvenile of me.
[/quote]...but just as juvenile as the PD I once had to tolerate at UW-Oshkosh's student station -- he used "Pete Moss." And the aroma of his personality matched what his air name sounded like...
 
I've always wanted to use the name 'Les Bull'. Wouldn't have to say much. "More music with Les Bull" or "Les Bull with More Music" or "Fewer Commercials with Les Bull" ... nah, the suits wouldn't like that last one much.
 
The last name "Tripp" was popular in the late 60s. Obvious reasons I guess, if you think back.

The first Tripp in radio (that I'm aware of) was Peter - ad DJ from the 50s involved in the payola scandals, and I believe that's his birth name. In fact, there's a story about his marathon on-air "wake-a-thons" for charity that caused him to hallucinate due to sleep deprivation, and may have been the origin of the term "tripping"...usually meaning on drugs, of course.

By the late 60s, I'd bet that many cities had a "Tripp" on either Top 40 or AOR FM stations. Bobby Mitchell of KYA became Bobby Tripp when he moved to KHJ. My memory is that KHJ already had a Mitchell on air.
 
trusty said:
Anyone have a name where the first letter of the last name sounded the same as the last letter of the first name? (ex: Jane Neuman, Doug Gleason, Eddie Edwards, etc.)
Click to expand...

I do...Greg Goodfellow. There was no reason to develop a radio name, as I've been teaching for 33 years, and everyone at the school where our radio station is knows what I sound like. I didn't see the need to change when I did (and do) part-time work for other local stations, and it's worked out well so far. The owners/PD didn't suggest a name change, either. Otherwise, 'Greg Williams' would have been an option. That might have worked, as Barry Williams on 'The Brady Bunch' played 'Greg,' right? Really, it's the first name thing.
 
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