The Definitive List of the Worst DJ Names of All Time

This article originally appeared on Thump

A fact: planet Earth is saturated with DJs. It's positively dripping with them. There are now so many DJs marauding through the airports of the world that scientists are started to notice a headphone shaped hole in the ozone. Your step dad's playing Tresor next week, your great uncle's Boiler Room set went down a storm, and your girlfriend's best mate's boss' nephew's niece is hosting a boat party at Dimensions. We've all gone bloody DJ mad.

Which is why you need to make sure that you stand out in a market that's absolutely heaving. Now, we'd all love to believe that talent, dedication, and determination are the three most important criteria for success, but we also all know that that's total bollocks. What you need is a name. A good name. A name that rolls off the tongue and stands out on stacked flyers.

The following 10 DJs have got it very, very wrong. Now, this list has nothing to do with their quality as DJs. Some of this lot might be as good as Jeremy Underground or Paula Temple or DJ Bone, but we'll probably never find out because they've decided to give themselves names that are less appealing than the prospect of sharing a baked bean bubblebath with Michael Gove and Douglas Carswell. So here it is: here are the absolute worst DJ names out there.

The "TWAT" in DJ TWAT stands for There Was a Time, which is somehow worse than it just being the word TWAT shouted by a bloke who's stubbed his toe. Or stepped on a brick of Lego! Or something similarly domestic and relatable!

Remember the old days, the good old days, the golden days of yore, when Jade Goody was still alive and helping to slide the word "minger" into our daily vocabulary? It was a happier, free, friendlier time. Our naivety knew no bounds and we all believed that the concept of the minger was here to stay. We bought minger T-shirts and dried our bodies in minger towels. We ate off minger plates and drank pints of Kia Ora out of minger tumblers. We were minger mad and we loved it. Then it all stopped. As quickly as the minger had embedded itself in a national psyche, it departed, leaving us bereft and alone. Only one man's brave enough to fly the minger flag and that's Minghead. Which would be fine if "Minghead" didn't sound like the name of a poorly-attended Bill Bailey tour that saw the West Country comedian's career die slowly in front of him in half empty 100 capacity rooms night after night.

The Bass Bumpers are a German Eurodance production outfit known for birthing classics like "Axel F" by Crazy Frog, "Rhythm Is a Dancer 2003" and, err, that's it. They've also picked one of the most strangely vile names imaginable. There's something ineffably terrible about "Bass Bumpers" as a name that it's difficult to pinpoint exactly what's so vile about it. It's like seeing the remnants of a hundred failed poached eggs resting in a sink. It also sounds a bit like Basshunter, but that only reminds you of what a 10/10 name "Basshunter" is.

Life's boring enough without having to be reminded of that boredom. Which is why "Pants and Socks" is such a terrible name. It's not offensive or boorish like some of the other monikers on here, but you can't help but wonder about the ambition of a pair of blokes who'd willingly call themselves Pants and Socks. If we blindly accept that one of the primary aims of art is to take us away from the toil and the life we trudge through on a daily basis, the decision to name yourself Pants and Socks is beyond baffling, and even if we refute that theory, it's still absolutely atrocious.

The Cool Willy Brothers are Benjy and Miles Platting-Estate, a pair of 24-year-old twins with a passion for frozen yoghurt, a can-do attitude and a rapidly-depleting trust fund. The Cool Willy Brothers are Rupert and Olly Wilde-Water, a pair of 24-year-old twins with a passion for rafting, a can do-attitude and a rapidly-depleting trust fund. The Cool Willy Brothers are Tristram and Archie Sumac-Dressing, a pair of 24-year-old twins with a passion for potted salads, a can-do attitude and a rapidly-depleting trust fund.

Maybe it's because I grew up in a part of the country where vowel sounds are elongated and relaxed to the point of becoming a kind of yawn, or maybe it's because I grew up with four brothers and no sisters and didn't really speak to a girl till I was about 22, but I've always been slightly repulsed by the word "fanny". It was a word I only heard used in hushed voices, a lexical object that rolled under tables and between coats in the cloak room at primary school. It became something strange and out of reach and unknown. We sort of knew what a fanny was. We were pretty sure we knew what a fanny did. Someone once claimed they'd seen a girl using the boy's toilets and had seen a fanny as a result. Still, that pre-pubescent sense of dis-ease and uncertainty haunts me to this day, and every time I see DJ Fanny's name pop up on the internet, I'm there again, a lost innocent hurtling headfirst into a world of debased depravity.

Chinese Man are a French electroswing group. None of them are Chinese.

You know what's really, really funny? You know what's gut-bustingly hilarious? You know what's so outrageously humorous that even thinking about it is enough to reduce me to a puce-faced puddle of piss? Paedophilia.* There's just something uniquely funny about the sexual abuse of children isn't there. If I was going to become a DJ I'd definitely think it was really funny to name myself after a disgraced glam rocker turned registered sex offender. Just for a laugh, like. Just for a really fucking good laugh. That's what I'd do. To hell with the consequences. So what if I'm shunned by friends and family and have difficulty making it through customs? I'm still having a laugh. And that's all that matters.

If there's anything funnier than child sex abuse, it's Nazism.** While it's possibly possible that the mastermind behind Inflatable Führer is actually making a point about how the best way to deal with fascism is to laugh at it, I'm not sure I totally buy it. The Brighton-based DJ seems to have named himself after a character in stoner cartoon Aqua Teen Hunger Force, which is a cartoon made solely for adults who talk about different strains of weed and enjoy cartoons that make references to different strains of weed. He also seems to play semi-regularly with an adult who goes around calling himself "ShittyFISHhead", which says it all really. ShittyFISHhead just missed out on a top ten placing, as it goes.

You're down the pub on a Tuesday night. It's a pub you don't normally go to. In fact, you're pretty sure this is the first time you've ever been in. There are £3 scotch eggs on the bar and locally brewed ale on tap. They don't do Stella. They don't show the football. They make you do a Morris dance on the bar top before giving you the wifi password. It smells like bleach and vintage shops, all must and crust. There's a dog in the corner and the dog has slobbered over everything and you're meant to pat the dog and coo at it. You sit down, slowly start supping on a five pound pint that blends Fairy Liquid with burnt sourdough. You notice the faintest of buzzes in the air. It's pub quiz night. You and your mate join in. You play to win. You take it more seriously than you should. And you think you've got it in the bag, You're quietly confident, and that confidence's mutated into pint after pint. You're £25 down and you don't care. The results are incoming. You're preparing a humble face to flash at the rest of the pub as you strut out with your winnings. The quizmaster shuffles the papers. Your heart's beating out of your chest. Team names fly by. Yours is yet to fall from his lips. "And this week's winner," he says, pausing to ramp the tension up to an almost unbearable level, "is… Armand Van Hard On!"

You weren't Armand Van Hard On. Armand Van Hard On are cheering. Whooping. Hollering. Armand Van Hard On are going absolutely fucking wild. You kick your table over. You storm off into the night, tears melting into the rain. Fuck it, you say. Fuck it all. Fuck hard ons. Fuck DJing. Fuck every fucking thing.

* This is obviously a joke. ** This is obviously also a joke.

@Bain3z