The 'Cringe' reason behind U2's Bono unusual name

Irish Daily Mirror

22-05-2025

To the world he is Bono, the frontman to the iconic band U2, but before his global fame he was Paul Hewson, a teenager growing up in Dublin. So how was Bono born?
The answer lies in an artsy street gang, a hearing aid shop and a Latin phrase. Like Cher, Shakira and Sting, the Irish frontman only ever needed one name, and alongside his guitarist, the Edge, the two created a global brand from their stage names.
It all started nearly 50 years ago as a kid in the capital. When he was younger, the soon-to-be-superstar was part of a group called "Lypton Village" alongside childhood mates and future rock band members Guggi and Gavin Friday.
They grew up on the same few streets. In classic child-like fashion, the group would often come up with ridiculous and far-fetched nicknames for each other, and Bono was no exception.
First being dubbed the long-winded "Steinhegvanhuysenolegbangbangbang", the name unsurprisingly didn't stick, so it was soon shortened to just "Huyseman". The nicknames soon evolved and "Houseman" was born.
It again progressed into more elaborate monikers, finally merging into "Bon Murray" with the penultimate stage "Bono Vox of O'Connell Street".
The name Bono Vox came from a Dublin hearing aid shop just off the Irish capital city's famous O'Connell Street, although it's not quite known how Bono picked up the name from the shop.
The star initially hated the moniker, but after finding out its Latin meaning, he soon came around to the idea. Bono Vox translates to "good voice", a name which seems somewhat apt, but when you've sold more than £170 million records worldwide, it's a rather fair appropriation of the term.
Soon shortening the full Latin to just Bono, Paul Hewson adopted the nickname at just 14, with his friends and family slowly using it over the years it became a part of himself. Speaking to Chris Evans on Virgin Radio, the U2 singer revealed: 'I've been called a lot of things over the years!
!I was three years old and my friend was four, and we had a sort of street gang into our teens, and I had many nicknames. I'm very pleased that I qualified for Bono, even though it is tricky in some quarters.'
And as U2 began to rise to fame, the stage names of him and his bandmates became a part of their identity, believing it was a way of getting closer to the audience.
Bono added: "The really significant thing is, I suppose, that we decided to be called by those names when we went out into the public, because it implies a kind of intimacy with your audience, which is nice.
"Some people will occasionally come up to me and say, 'Hey, Paul, how are you doing Paul?' as if that's getting close. The last person to call me Paul was my dad, and he's dead. So don't call me Paul.'