F ew people know that before Steely Dan became Steely Dan, the boys performed and toured under 7,566 other names as part of a test marketing research investigation. In 1973, aided by the Windsor Unimax 5000 computer system, a test market research investigation was initiated by Jack Tafoya, a prominent record company executive with a penthouse apartment in the Brill building. As a result, the computer came up with 9,087 of the best names for the burgeoning group. Here is a list of the top fifty leading to the final selection:

Penis Whip
Ocular Fillibrator
Oceans of Chocolate
Marsupial Soup
Thorax
Hard Donut
Slime Unit
Chucky Upchuck
Thigh Patties
Cold Stone Sea Monkey
Virginia Mastic Wiener Whistle
"The"
Conniption and Connivin'
The Blabberworks People
False Intelligence
Nabokov
The Pewterberg Faction
Shunt
The Lipstick Lizards
Sucktion
The Rambling Whippoorwills
Hi Jinx on Ice
Small Doses
Saliva, the Movie
Luvburst
Pennsylvania 911
Don and Greg
The Cuticles
Boric Acid
Shredded Brain Compote
Carolina num nums
The Don't ****s
Sliding Curve
Bleckfast at Tiffany's
Road Hummer
Radical Pattycake
Thunderhurl
Iron Jaundice
The Bloody Stumps
Hard-as-steel Man
Strong Man
Steel Men
Steel-eye Pan
Steely Bob
Steely Robert
Steely Shiela
Sheedy, Allie
Sheedy Dan
Shelly Mann
and finally....
Steely Dan

Source: Arnold Jeevis Never Heard of 'Em: Musical Groups' Original Band Names, Putnam and Rowes, Berlin, 1981.
 
* from this site: http://www.steelydan.com/schiller1.html

no rusty bollocks?.. very disappointed :(

Great story, but not sure it's true..in the biog of the group I have ('Reelin' in the Years' by Brian Sweet) it says
 
'...many suggestions were made, some patently less serious than others - including Big Nardo and The Eight Grade - and they eventually settled on Steely Dan..''
 
'Steely Dan' is, err, something of a personal nature in the William Burroughs book 'The Naked Lunch', a favourite book of Becker & Fagen apparently.
 

the boys performed and toured under 7,566 other names

 
At a rate of one gig a day, that would take nearly 21 years...

Well, what else could they do?  Thin Lizzy was already taken. 

craigb
Well, what else could they do?  Thin Lizzy was already taken. 

BUT not the coffee house band...
 
that was a pearl ripe for plunder...

musicman100

craigb
Well, what else could they do?  Thin Lizzy was already taken. 

BUT not the coffee house band...
 
that was a pearl ripe for plunder...

DUH!!!!!!

The Coffee House Band
 
A name so good they wrote a song about it.
 

Oh I shudda linked to it, no?
 

bapu

musicman100

craigb
Well, what else could they do?  Thin Lizzy was already taken. 

BUT not the coffee house band...
 
that was a pearl ripe for plunder...

DUH!!!!!!

I fell for it ..................and clicked on that link.

Shelly Manne ... great jazz drummer.
 
Sounds like something that couldn't be true but it wouldn't surprise me.  I've never really liked Steely Dan.  Obviously great musicianship but I always got the feeling the song were contrived almost as if they used focus groups to write their material so ... test marketing a name would not surprise me.