When David Bowie revealed why he chose his stage name

19 June 2026, 12:45

How The Monkees and a Texas Revolutionary helped birth David Bowie.

David Bowie is one of the most famous names in the history of popular music, but of course it wasn't the name he was born with.

He was born David Robert Jones in Brixton in 1947, and during his first attempts at fame, he was known as Davy or Davie Jones.

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Bowie's first single 'Liza Jane' was released under the name Davie Jones and the King Bees in 1964.

He was still known as David Jones when he released 'I Pity The Fool' with The Manish Boys in spring the following year, and that summer's 'You've Got a Habit For Leaving' was released as Davy Jones, featuring his next band The Lower Third.

But when he released 'Cant Help Thinking About Me' in January 1966, he was now known as David Bowie.

Liza Jane

As for why he needed the name change, that was thanks to a Mancunian who had crossed the pond: David Thomas Jones.

David Jones had released a flop self-titled album in 1965, but the following year he burst on to the international scene a year later as a quarter of The Monkees.

But simply, the name Davy Jones was now very much taken.

So David from Brixton needed a new stage name. He chose Bowie, and if we take a lead from how he pronounced it, that rhymes with "Joey" - not "TOWIE" (or "Dewey".)

So we know why he needed a name, but why that one and where did it come from?

How to pronounce “Bowie”

Well, the most famous Bowie before our David was James Bowie, and that's – indirectly – where he got the name from.

Born in Kentucky in 1796, James "Jim" Bowie (pronounced /ˈbuːi/ or "BOO-ee" for whatever it's worth) was a fighter, frontiersman and key player un the Texas Revolution, who died at the Battle of the Alamo.

In 1827, he was involved in a duel later dubbed the Sandbar Fight. During that fight (that descended into something more like a brawl), James used a butcher-type knife that would later be dubbed a "Bowie knife".

Where the actual blade came from is a little uncertain. James's bother Rezin Bowie took the credit for inventing it, but it seems as though Jim Bowie tweaked various knife designs over the years.

The Life and Times of James Bowie

Bowie became an almost mythological figure and his knife – wherever it came from – a part of American history,.

It's worth mentioning that Bob Dylan namechecked the blade in his track 'I Shall Be Free No. 10' ("Now I got a friend who spends his life / Stabbing my picture with a bowie knife"), released on Another Side of Bob Dylan, a good 18 months before Davie Jones was reborn as David Bowie.

Dylan was a key influence on Bowie.

He would not only would go on to cover Maggie's Farm (with Tin Machine), 'Like a Rolling Stone' (for a Mick Ronson album) and Time Out of Mind track 'Trying to Get to Heaven', but also studied him in 'Song For Bob Dylan' from 1971's breakthrough album Hunky Dory.

Song for Bob Dylan (2015 Remaster)

"The name Bowie just appealed to me when I was younger," Bowie told author William Burroughs for Rolling Stone in 1974.

"I was into a kind of heavy philosophy thing when I was 16 years old, and I wanted a truism about cutting through the lies and all that."

Burroughs – whose cut-up method was also a significant influence on Bowie – said: "Well, it cuts both ways, you know, double-edged on the end."

And Bowie replied: "I didn't see it cutting both ways till now."